Anna M. Anastas (Bordewick)

Funeral Notices-Quincy, Illinois: Anastas-Funeral services for Mrs. Anna Anastas, Kansas City, Mo., will be held Thursday morning at 9:30 o'clock in the Duker Funeral home and at 10:00 o'clock in St. Anthony's Catholic church. Interment in St. Anthony cemetery. Friends invited and may call at the funeral home Wednesday afternoon and evening, and Thursday until time of services. The rosary will be recited Wednesday evening at 9:00 o'clock in the funeral home.

Note: Her body was taken from Kansas City, MO to Quincy, IL for burial. ____ A story was told that Anna Bordewick's intended lived nearby in Melrose Twp. on the outskirts of Quincy, but her family, following an old German custom, wouldn't let her marry before her older unmarried sister.

So, for a time, Anna took care of her brother-in-law's mother in Pittsfield, Illinois. Anna, against her parents wishes, then left for Chicago where she sewed uniforms for the WWI war effort. Her intended apparently died in the meantime. She eventually worked as a waitress at a restaurant owned by Nicholas Anastas, who she married.

Interview with Anna's son; John Anastas by Sheila Anastas: "Anna was born in the house off [St. Anthony Rd.] the road now owned by (the late) Leo Stupavsky. My mother learned high German, spoke low (common) German in class at school and a mixture of Dutch. She would talk about European royal families and how they were related. My Dad was the head of the house, made the living, had no time for chatter. My mother kept house, helped make a living in the beer garden, and bore the children."

Recollections of Sheila Anastas: "When I was very small in the early 1950's, we visited Grandma Anne at a house at 710 Adams St. in Quincy, Illinois. She would put her handicapped daughter Helen's hair up in rollers for her in the kitchen. At this time, my uncles were not married, and their bedroom upstairs had beds all in a row that reminded me of the Seven Dwarves' house.

I remember Grandma Anne when she lived in Topeka, Kansas in the late 1950's making sugar cookies. She would roll out the cookie dough, and then cut the cookies with the drinking edge of a water glass.

One time when my father was being silly, he answered the phone, "Speak-easy's Pool Hall, Eight ball speaking!" It was Grandma Anne calling, and she hung-up on him. When he called her back, she let him know that she didn't appreciate the joke. She had a powerful personality, and her children usually did what she wanted. The older ones especially felt a great debt to her for the hardship she endured for them when they were children. During the depression, with her husband hospitalized, she somehow kept Welfare at bay from taking her young children away by washing other people's clothes for days and hours on end. My father, as the oldest child in the family, never forgot this.

One time when she lived in Topeka, Grandma Anne went into her bedroom to comb her hair. She kept it in a bun. When she loosened the bun, her fine hair was long enough to reach the floor. She always wore "old lady" high heel, lace-up, black shoes and a button-up-the-front house dress, with a belt. She had a little "squashed" lacquered black straw hat with netting on top for going out-usually to walk to Church each morning for Mass. Grandma never learned how to drive a car. She didn't approve of women smoking, so my Mother would try to smoke in the bathroom when Grandma Anne was around our house. Grandma had a round woven straw sewing basket and lid, which usually could be found near her favorite chair.

Later, she lived in Kansas City with her unmarried children, Paul and Helen. When her married sons and families came from away to visit, she would fry huge amounts of fried chicken, which she stored in the drawer under the kitchen stove to keep warm for whoever got hungry. We would go to Swope Park to picnic sometimes.

As she got older, when we visited she always wore a house dress and slippers and sat quietly in a chair, seeming in deep thought. My father said that her feet bothered her from being on them for years taking in washing. I don't ever remember a real conversation with my grandmother, although we must have had some when I was younger, and I saw her more often. She always seemed very old compared to my other grandmother (and she was!). I recall that she had blue eyes."

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Aug 10 2018, 5:31:33 UTC