Anna Marie Edwards, 68, of Channelview, Texas, entered the Kingdom of Heaven on the First Day of August in the year of our Lord 2018. She was from the Ohkay Owingeh tribe (formally known as San Juan Pueblo) born on November 14, 1949 to Lola and Felix Mestas in Gallup, New Mexico where she grew up and graduated from Cathedral High School. She moved to California where she received an Associate’s Degree from Los Angeles City College and shortly thereafter married a Vietnam Naval Officer, James Stewart Edwards, on March 7, 1970.
Anna spent most of her career in the petroleum transportation industry as a weigh scale operator and later a dispatcher for GATX Corp.’s tank and rail systems. She had the gift of gab and treated each of her drivers with respect, getting to know them individually and often conversing with them via her own personal CB Radio.
While Anna worked abidingly as a dispatcher, devoted wife and mother, she simultaneously upheld her many committee and board appointments for organizations like the Houston Native American Chamber of Commerce, the Alabama Coushatta Powwow Association, the Houston Inter-Tribal Council, the Texas Gulf Coast Tia-Piah Society, the Native American Health Coalition, Catholic Daughters Association, the Board of Health for Native Americans with MD Anderson, the Rice University Powwow Committee, and was a co-producer of KPFT’s 90.1 FM People of Earth, a Houston Native American radio program.
A natural historian and storyteller, Anna was passionate about capturing moments in time with pictures, teaching Native American Culture through lecture and exhibition opportunities throughout the City, and cultivating awareness and honor for our nation’s military men and women through her extensive and detailed military exhibits and ceremonial contributions for city leaders and other cultural communities. As a wife and sister of military men, it was important to her that all servicemen and women – all warriors – know they were her heroes.
She will be remembered by many for her advocacy of the fellow Native American Community, support of our Nation’s Servicemen and women, the contemporary and native jewelry she frequently made (a trade she learned from her parents at an early age), powwow participation, riding around in her wheelchair touching the lives of every individual that crossed her path, and always being the last one out the door.
Anna is survived by her husband, Retired Vietnam Veteran James Stewart Edwards; son, James Leonard Edwards and wife Aimee; grandchildren, Madison Virginia Bedwell and Benjamin Jarrett Sanderson; great-grandson, Bryan Zyler Feather; sister, Cipriana Mestas, brother Philip Maestas, Sister-in-Law Betty Mestas, and numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, and extended family. She was preceded in death by her son, John Edwards, parents Lola and Felix Mestas, niece Eileen Daniel, nephew, Leroy Mansfield, and brother Julian Mestas.
Services will be officiated by Pastor Richard Amador of Son Harvest Church
Honor Songs will be presented by James Stephenson
