Lela Marie Burton Smith

May 1, 1924 - May 1, 2021



Birth

Lela Marie Burton was the third of five daughters who were born to Alexander Dorson Burton and his wife Fern Pearl Burton (née Totten). Lela was born on May 1, 1924, at home on the family farm, located 6 miles south-southwest of Summerfield, Kansas. Her sisters were Jennie Rae (Loch), Virginia (Petersen), Mary Lee (Starkey) and Betty Jo (Rodick).

Of her birth and earliest years, we do know a little as told by her older sister, Jennie Rae.

I was five years old when Lela was born. Virgie and I woke up one morning and started to go into the dining room. Aunt Fama, Mom's twin sister, took us back to the bedroom to dress us. We heard a baby crying and I thought it was a kitten. I didn't know why Mom was in bed…. When Aunt Fama went home that day, I was hoping she wouldn't take the baby with her; I didn't realize the baby belonged to us....

On my sixth birthday, on our way to Aunt Fama and Uncle Art's, the steering went out on our car, so we rolled over into a ditch. When we got out from under the car, my Mother said we had killed our baby. Lela, the baby, was bundled up and still asleep. (from Selected Memories by Jennie Rea Loch)



Pre-teen Years

The work ethic was strong on the Burton farm. Lela would help milk the cows. They could not spend extended time away (such as at the fair) because they had to milk.

Lela remembered the excitement of going to town. The family would take the milk and eggs they had collected all week and go to the General Store and trade them for goods and supplies. The shopping list was handed across the counter to the clerk who got all the items from the shelves.

On Saturday nights they went to Beattie, Kansas to watch the 'flickers'. When it got dark, the people would sit on wooden benches, and a movie would be shown on the side of a building. Lela said that her Mom would 'read' the movie to her -- they were silent movies.

Lela's early education took place at the one room school house a couple miles from home. She and her sisters would ride a pony or in a pony-drawn cart to school. On the path to school was the 'Mile of Seven Bridges' where a creek wound around. On the way to and from school they would hunt for violets in the timber along the way. Their ponies would stay at the school all day in a barn, and then the girls would ride them home. Lela's pony was named 'Spot’. When there was a heavy snow, her Dad, Alex, would ride his horse ahead of them to make a path through the snow. Ponies can be onerier than horses, and sometimes Spot would stop dead and Lela would go flying off.

Her favorite games were 'pick up sticks' and 'handy over' where they would throw a ball over the building. One day at school a boy called her a 'smart Alec' and she thought he was making fun of her Dad (Alex). She felt like fighting the boy to teach him a lesson. When she didn't behave in school, the teacher would come talk to her Dad, but she never got in trouble with her Dad. In her own words, the most important thing she learned from her parents was honesty.

Corporal punishment was part of school and Lela remembered one time the students hid all the rulers to avoid getting their hands hit.

Summers were spent barefoot. In the Spring Lela and her sisters would pick up any glass or nails off the ground so they wouldn't step on them. Bath frequency was somewhere between rare and never (closer to never) – there was no running water or electricity in rural areas at that time.

Growing up, Lela and her family went to Richland Center Church. They called it the 'dunker church' because when people were baptized they were dunked under the water. Lela remembered that before going to church on Sunday morning, they would have to wash their feet and polish their shoes.

Her favorite times were when relatives came to visit. Growing up in the country they didn't have many people around. They would make pan-fried chicken for the company, and angel food cake (that Lela's Mom (Fern) had learned to make at the women's club). They would make homemade ice cream using cream from the farm and flavor it with vanilla or chocolate chips or strawberries.

The farm radio was powered by a battery that had to be exchanged every week to be recharged. Lela's favorite program was 'The Romance of Helen Trent’. After a few days the battery got so weak that they would have to listen with their ears right next to the speaker.

Lela's Dad played the fiddle, and some of her cousins would play for barn dances. Someone in the neighborhood would clear out their barn for a dance. Her sisters would dress her up and put make-up on her for fun. Lela had a love of fiddle music that she kept her whole life. She also enjoyed the sound of yodeling.

Back to school shopping involved looking at fabrics at the General Store and ordering patterns. Store-bought clothes were a luxury.



High School & Teaching

Lela went to High School in Axtell, Kansas and then Summerfield. She shared a room with some other girls in town and only came home on the weekends because, although it was only six miles away, the county roads were dirt and were impassable if there had been any rain. Also, there was usually just one family car, and gas was expensive at 11 cents a gallon.

She first took notice of the boy who would become her future husband, Max Smith, when he was working at a gas station in Beattie.

She and the girls whom she shared a room with had their own stores of food that they cooked and ate all week, but by Fridays they were usually down to only popcorn.

In health class, she did well because she knew all the body parts from cleaning chickens, except for one time when she misidentified some internal organ as the 'gizzard’. She was so embarrassed.

Lela, by her own account, was extremely shy in her youth. Her favorite subject was math because you could get good grades without talking. At school Lela would hide her head under her desk when she ate her sandwiches so no one would see her homemade bread crumble. Her favorite teacher was Mr. Pritchard. He saw potential in Lela and pushed her to do better.

Her shyness was so bad that one time she went on a date with a boy who was also shy, and the only thing she said the whole night was 'Whee' when the boy took a turn too fast in his car. But despite her shyness, Lela was voted the football queen one year. Her senior year, she and fellow classmates took a senior trip by bus to Colorado Springs.

She took 'Normal Training’, a curriculum that educated her to teach grade school when she graduated at the age of 17 in 1941. She took exams to become a teacher. She started the next fall in a one-room school house south of Beattie, and the next year at the age of 18 moved on to teach at Mina, Kansas (a town now defunct). She rode a horse to and from her job in Mina.

The rituals of courtship at that time often began at dances at various community halls. Lela enjoyed going to dances, and at one dance, the dashing young man from the gas station, Max Smith, danced all night with Lela's best friend who had come along, but he did not dance with her. She was not impressed.

It took a long time before Max asked her out, but at a later dance in Baileyville, he must have noticed her because he became an admirer.

Lela and Max started going steady. Lela was impressed with Max because most boys would just buy a girl a soda. He bought her a malt. Their dates usually involved going to the movies or dances. Their favorite song was 'The Tennessee Waltz'. After dates he would bring her back to the Burton farm, but often would 'accidentally' get stuck in the ditch on his way home. Lela's Dad would have to get Max's car out with a tractor, and Max would have to spend the night.



Marriage and War Years

WWII broke out and Max became a private in the Army. They exchanged love letters and decided to get married on a Saturday in March of 1943, the timing partly because Max would get more pay as a married soldier. They met in Hiawatha, Kansas, a midpoint between Lela's folks' farm and where Max was stationed. The car Max was riding in had an accident on the way there so he hitchhiked the rest of the way to Hiawatha (people would readily give soldiers a ride). Lela drove there with gas she got from her sister and brother-in-law (gas was rationed during the war and farmers were allowed more than most people). After the wedding Lela returned home. She was too shy at first to tell her folks she was now married. Lela was 18 going on 19. She finished the school year as a teacher.

Lela said she began to get over her social anxiety when she got married and began to talk more.

Lela eventually told her folks she was married, or they found out. She would go on to rent a room in the town or city close to wherever Max was stationed. This took her all over the country, from South Carolina to Denver to Washington, DC. She recalled riding on the bus in the segregated South and the black people having to sit in the back. It seemed wrong to her, but didn't know what she could do. In one apartment she rented there were bedbugs, and as a result she had to sleep on the dining room table. During the war Lela took her turn helping the war effort much like 'Rosie-the-Riveter', working in a battery factory and other places. When Max was shipped overseas to France, Lela stayed with her sister who lived in Washington state, hoping he would not be one of the casualties -- luckily he was not. Max returned from overseas, and they had a belated honeymoon at Niagara Falls.



The Farmer's Wife

When the war was over. Max was discharged and they took up farming, at first with Max's uncle just south of Pawnee City. Nebraska. Next they farmed some land near Union Center, Nebraska, which is now a ghost town. Their first son Dennis was born while on this farm near Union Center. In 1951 with help from the veteran's act, they bought a 160 acre farm near Liberty, Nebraska. Kevan and Fran were born while on this farm near Liberty. The farm had no indoor plumbing. Water came from the well outside. The bathroom was an outhouse. The winter heat came from a pot-bellied stove. The phone hung on a wall and their number was two shorts and a long. It was a 'party-line' so anyone could listen in to the conversation if they wanted to hear the gossip.

On Mondays, they often went to the neighbors, who had a TV, to watch 'I Love Lucy'.

Lela gave birth to Dennis in 1947, Kevan in 1951 and Fran in 1957. Bath nights were Saturdays and everyone got their turn, youngest to oldest, each using the same water, with baby Fran in the kitchen sink.

After 15 or so years of hardscrabble farm life and barely getting by, Lela and Max decided to move to Lincoln, partly motivated by the idea that it would be easier for the kids to go to college. In 1960 they sold the farm and rented a house on North 57th Street in Lincoln, Nebraska..



Move to Town

Lela gave birth to her last child, Burt, in 1961. The family's first TV came in 1962 when a brother-in-law brought over a black-and-white set. Lela was a housewife and had four kids to supervise, but she found time to be involved in church life at First Methodist and later Trinity Methodist.

The family bought a house at 1619 'B' in 1964 and lived there 15 years. Lela was a great cook, making all sorts of recipes, the family sometimes never eating the same dish for months at a time. Her job as a one-room school teacher may have ended years before, but she continued as an educator to her kids, their day spent in school only the beginning of their lessons. Each of her kids had private music lessons, swimming lessons, scouting and a large library of books to peruse.

After her own kids were older, Lela (with help from Max) found fulfillment as foster parents to many youths.

As the 1970s began, the idea of women working outside the home became more common and Lela joined in the workforce to help with the family income. She worked downtown and rode the bus home. As she waited for the bus home, she enjoyed watching the workmen build the NBC building (now Wells Fargo).

Max was doing better in his service station business, and Lela began helping more, doing the bookwork so he could get more sleep. She continued to help him in several roles till they both retired when they were in their 70's.



Retirement Years

Lela and Max did some traveling, and kept busy with what for them was their dream house on Princess Margaret Drive. They became active in church life again and joined Christ Methodist on 'A' Street.

The desire for knowledge never stopped for Lela. Besides constantly reading the news and magazines, she had the desire to learn new skills. Typing was not a commonly acquired skill when Lela was a school girl back in the 1930s and 1940s. She had always wanted to learn and taught herself how when she was in her 70's. She used her newly acquired skill to author a two-volume cookbook for the use of her children.

Lela and Max were still vibrant till in their 80's until Max had a couple strokes that affected his speech and Lela had several mini-strokes that made practical household tasks more difficult for her. Both somewhat disabled, they made a team, Max doing the housework and Lela doing the talking. Lela said that when Max would say some malapropism or garbled words, when they should have been crying, they instead just laughed.

With help from their kids and other members of the community, they were able to live independently until their 90's.

Max passed away on March 15, 2015, a few months shy of his 95th birthday. Lela survived him several years and still took great enjoyment in life up until the end when she was in great pain. She was released from her pain on May 1, 2021, her birthday, to join Max, her husband of 72 years.

Lela is survived by her four children, Dennis (Tammy) Smith, Kevan (Rosemary) Smith, Fran Smith, Burt (Carrie) Smith; eight grandchildren, Amy McCartney, Wendy Weber, Heather Smith, Amber Ayres, Andrew Smith, Anna Polage, Tori Smith, and Adam Smith; and ten great-grandchildren, Kari, Brooke, Foster, Braden, Harper, Etta, Marco, Elliot, Vada and Ryian.







The family wishes to thank the staff of Gateway Vista for the wonderful care they gave Lela, especially this last year during pandemic times when family members could not be there as much as they would have been otherwise because of Covid restrictions that were in place to protect nursing home residents.