Vievie M. Jewell Teague, rural LaHarpe, died on Thursday, March 29, 2012, at Windsor Place in Iola. She was 96.
Vievie was born on her parent’s farmstead a mile east of Princeton on Nov. 6, 1915. She was the only child of Samuel and Nellie Griffith Jackson. When she was three, her father bought a livery stable in Iola, and the family moved in with her dad’s parents. This was during World War I. A year later, her parents traded their business for a farm in rural LaHarpe, less than a mile from the family dairy farm of the man who would later become her second husband. She and her parents eventually moved back into Iola when her father traded the farm for a farm implement store and later a real estate business and filling station. Vievie decided during ninth grade that she was going to the University of Kansas and she was going to be an English teacher. However, during the Great Depression, her father lost their nice home and businesses, forcing a move to a farm owned by his parents in Frederick, Okla. They lived out the Dust Bowl Days in a share cropper’s cabin with no electricity, indoor plumbing or running water. Vievie was moved during her junior year at Iola High School and she was heartbroken.
Vievie graduated from Frederick High School in 1934. Her dreams of going to KU gone, she enrolled in Central State College in Edmond, Okla., where she met her future husband, Edward Jewell, in history class. He wooed her by singing “Stars Fell on Alabama” outside her apartment. Vievie began her first teaching job in Haskell in 1936 after two years of college. She moved back to her parents’ home and was paid $70 a month for nine months. After teaching her second year at a different school, she returned to college for the summer and became engaged to Eddie. They eloped and were married in the Methodist parsonage in Oklahoma City on July 11, 1938. They both graduated from Central State University in Edmond. They taught together in several schools in Oklahoma before moving to Humboldt, where Edward had been hired to teach at the high school shortly before the birth of their first child in 1945. They eventually moved to Iola and Vievie was hired to teach English at Iola High School when their youngest chid was in kindergarten. She later taught English at Iola Junior High, and her husband taught algebra there until his death on Sept. 13, 1973. She and her younger daughter toured Europe twice together.
On Aug. 3, 1976, Vievie married Allan Teague, and in 1978 she retired from teaching after 25 years. She and Allan became “Winter Texans,” and camped throughout the United States. Allan died Oct. 12, 2005.
Vievie was baptized into the Methodist Church at nine and was a member of Wesley United Methodist Church, where she was a devoted servant of Wesley’s United Methodist Women. She was a member of Allen County Trail Hound Camping Club, Dirt Diggers Garden Club and Allen County Area Retired Teachers. She continued to live in her own home built on Allan’s family farm until shortly before her 96th birthday, when a broken hip forced her to move to Windsor Place and Fountain Villa. She was an avid reader and lifelong learner who loved gardening, traveling, her peacocks and her cats, but most important to her always was her family.
Vievie is survived by her daughter Eddyra (Jewell) Nelson and her husband, Delbert, son, Robert Jewell and his wife, Judy, daughter Ona Jewell Chapman and her husband, Arthur, stepson, David Teague, stepdaughter, Alana Anderson, 14 grandchildren, two stepgrandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren, two stepgreat-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren. She is also survived by her beloved cats, Casey and Miss Kitty.
Visitation will be at Waugh-Yokum & Friskel Memorial Chapel in Iola from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Services will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Wesley United Methodist Church.
Suggested memorials are to Wesley United Methodist Church and Allen County Animal Rescue Facility (ACARF).
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