Ann (Ewy) Dunning just may be the greatest comedienne to have ever lived. But she wasn't so concerned with recognition. She dedicated her life to teaching and her children. While health problems cut her career as a schoolteacher and a swimming instructor short, she held an even more rapt classroom that, through her example, learned how to live, love and storm right over any obstacle.
Peter, Laura and myself have set up a scholarship in my mother's name. It helps graduating high school seniors who are looking to go to college to become teachers. It will also aid non-traditional students going back to school with aspirations of becoming educators.
Ann Dunning Memorial Scholarship Fund
4745 Wheaton Drive, Ste. 100
Fort Collins, CO 80525
phone: 970 224-3462
Fax: 970 224-5153
email: sandy@cfnc.info
AND ALL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE NOW TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!
Remember the guy who danced with Ann at our Country-Western dance? He just had his 4th heart
attack at our dance hall - we had to call 911. He told me last Saturday that his favorite photo on his wall is of Ann and him dancing that night. He could tell that she had physical problems (eye patch, for example), but that she just wanted to dance and laugh and have fun. He admires that quality. His words echo your discription of your mom. One genuine lady.
love to you and Sarah Kit and Ron
(Kit and Ron host and teach dance classes all over the country. They live in Colorado Springs.)
And now from Sue Bloss...Quite possibly the greatest euology ever written:
Ann was quite simply the kindest, gentlest, most tolerant person I have ever known. She was also strong. She put up with more in this life than most of us will ever understand. Besides illness and catastrophe, she raised a family under circumstances that would have daunted most women. She cooked on a wood stove, endured years of financial uncertainty, and faced the dissolution of her adult life with courage and grace. There was never resentment over those issues in her life that may have embittered lesser people; she was a class act in every sense of the word.
While others of us entered sedentary and complacent periods in our lives, Ann tackled college and fulfilled her dream of becoming a teacher…little did she know, she already was a teacher to many around her. In an incomprehensible loss to our children, she never had the chance to teach in a classroom, but she constantly taught through example. She was an inspiration in her view of people: always the positive. Never was she heard to disparage anyone – even those who sought to harm her. In the company of someone who would gossip, a gentle admonishment – “now, now…” would remind the speaker of the folly we all engage in at times: how can we criticize when we ourselves are also fodder for the mill? Her ability to see that goodness in others is motivation to do the same in our lives now – if we have the courage and the ability to set ourselves aside to do so.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus spoke to us in amazing clarity. There is no ambiguity: God blesses the gentle and lowly, for the whole earth will belong to them. (“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5). I believe that Ann now owns our world: that she resides not just in our hearts and memories, but in the woods and streams and flowers and clouds and earth that she loved. And recognizing that grief will take its toll on us, Jesus promised that those who grieve will find solace (“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Matthew 5:4). Is it coincidence that those two verses are linked? I think not. I am comforted by the knowledge that Ann Dunning now owns my world and I have not lost her.
As the apostle Paul wrote, Ann fought the good fight. She ran the good race. Her illness never won – it never diminished her capacity for caring and loving. It might have made her brain fail to recognize things as she once did, but it never changed her perception of who she was. It might have changed her vision, but it never changed how she saw the world. It might have changed her physical appearance, but it never changed the beauty that she was. It might have changed the perception of those around her, but it never altered her essential core – the beautiful soul who was Ann Dunning.
There is the age-old question, “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
With certainty, I know of one.
