Daughter, granddaughter serving as parade marshals to remember 109-year-old matriarch

A tribute wrapped in love

Laura Cartmill-Cooley, left, and Nanette Nacy pose for a portrait downtown. They will be serving as grand marshals in Saturday's Jaycees Christmas Parade.
Laura Cartmill-Cooley, left, and Nanette Nacy pose for a portrait downtown. They will be serving as grand marshals in Saturday's Jaycees Christmas Parade.

Last spring, Sarah Holmes asked Helen Fender to be grand marshal of this weekend's Jefferson City Jaycees Christmas Parade.

And, at 108, Fender said yes.

"She knew it was because of her age," Laura Cartmill-Cooley, Fender's daughter, told the News Tribune on Thursday. "She was one of those kinds of people who went with the flow.

"We were teaching her how to wave."

Fender celebrated her 109th birthday on Sept. 22. But about a month later, she had a stroke - and died Nov. 1.

So, Cartmill-Cooley and Nanette Nacy, one of Fender's 13 grandchildren, will take Fender's place at the head of Saturday's 4:30 p.m. parade.

"I feel like we're honoring my grandmother one more time," Nacy said. "I think it's a huge honor that she wanted to do that.

"Grandma was so special to me that I just think it was great to be honored, to be asked."

Born in 1907, Fender told the News Tribune at her 100th birthday celebration she had seen the world turn from single-phone lines - that had to be shared by a neighborhood - to high-tech cellphones, and she had been a witness to, among many things, the Great Depression, the news of Pearl Harbor, World War II rationing, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

During a time when women rarely went to school, Fender noted during her 2007 interview, she graduated from William Chrisman High School in Independence in 1925 then earned an associate's degree from Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa.

"I took general courses, and I also went ahead and took some teacher classes," Fender said nine years ago.

She had planned on being a teacher - but those plans changed when she met and married George E. Fender in 1934.

They had five children.

Cartmill-Cooley, now 80, noted this year's Christmas parade theme is "'Christmas Through the Decades,' and (Fender) saw a lot of decades. I think that's why they asked her" to be the grand marshal.

Until her mid-October stroke, Fender "was still perky enough that she could have managed" the honor, her daughter said.

Fender also suffered from some dementia that affected her memory of more-recent events, Cartmill-Cooley said, but "she would remember a lot of things."

Granddaughter Nacy added: "She had a good sense of humor."

Cartmill-Cooley said Fender had developed a wide circle of people who knew her.

"She was always a positive thinker (and) was very kind to everybody," the daughter explained. "She was not a 'grouchy old woman,' at all.

"She had a lot of energy, and she always wanted to be doing something for everybody."

Fender also was an artist, who was "always making something for someone, it seems like," Cartmill-Cooley said.

Nacy wants people to know "just how lovable" her grandmother was.

"She was giving us kisses and hugs up until the end - until she couldn't anymore," Nacy said. "That's really what touches my heart so much."

Nacy's thankful the Jaycees chose to honor Fender - and Nacy and her mom can show that honor by representing Fender as the parade's grand marshals.

Cartmill-Cooley added: "She was an example for all of her family - a good example.

"We would do good to do half as good as she did."

But we all should try to be like Helen Fender.

"Life's happier when you're doing good things," Cartmill-Cooley said.