Christine Vanderburg

Estella Christine Vanderburg was born in Bennington Oklahoma on January 18th, 1924. She was born to Maynard and Jennie Cox. Christine was the fourth of nine children. Audie, Ann, Dessie May, then Christine, then Marie, Roy, Ruth, Frances, and Donna.

Her mother Jennie’s family were woodcutters and Jennie remembered that she actually lived in a wagon some of the time growing up as her family traveled around. Because of her mother, Christine had a lifelong love of nature. Christine could remember Jennie taking her for walks in the woods to find natural remedies for all sorts of sicknesses. At the property of Christine’s parents in Oklahoma, there are roses still growing today that Jennie planted over seventy years ago. To the end of her life, Christine always kept a garden of some sort. She always had her own garden and raised many types of fruits and vegetables. Some of her most beloved gifts were the jams and jellies that she made.

Her father, Maynard, had a birth certificate that lists he was born in “Indian Territory, Oklahoma.” He did not learn to read or write as a child. Christine once told the story of how her father didn’t know the correct change to give at a local store so he just held out his hand for the store clerk to take what he needed. Christine spoke of how he received his education through hosting the local school teachers at his house. The practice of the day was for the school teachers to live with the families of the children that attended the one room school houses. At night the school teacher taught Maynard to read and write. Although Maynard and Jennie were not formally educated, they gave Christine and her brothers and sisters a knowledge of how to persevere in life and a home full of love. Their home was always one where people wanted to be. Christine remembers her father heartily taking part in local dances for the kids and would even host them at their house from time to time.

As Christine grew, she remembered always loving the time with her friends, especially the local get togethers and community dances. She had a best friend, Wilma Shoemate, and according the Otis, the two of them were pretty rowdy. She didn’t have the normal teenage experience, because, when she was just thirteen years old, an older boy in the school house threw an eraser at her to try and get her attention. Apparently it worked. From that time on, she would allow Otis Vanderburg to walk her home from community functions at the schoolhouse. She began dating Otis and Otis’ brother Thomas dated Wilma. It wasn’t long after that that Thomas passed away in a swimming accident. Christine remembers that Otis talked and cried to her for long months after that, as they would talk late at night, grieving for his brother.

Otis has said that Christine was the prettiest girl in all of Bennington. He remembers that he knew he was in love with Christine when, after walking her home one evening from an event, they stayed outside her home and talked until the sun came up. For two teenagers who both had chores in the morning, that was extravagant. That began a pattern of Otis walking her home and them standing out in front of her house talking for hours, while her younger sister Marie would try and sneak outside and hide behind a tree to listen to them talk. Otis didn’t want to ask Christine to marry him because he was afraid that she would say no. Otis and Christine had different memories of how it actually happened, but Otis remembers that she brought it up at some point, and then he finally asked her as they were again walking home from a party one evening. Christine surely loved Otis, but she did have one doubt. Otis had a favorite horse named Prince and when they would ride by a certain house near Christine’s parents where a girl lived that liked Otis, Prince would stop like it was the normal thing to do. Grandpa states to this day that he only stopped and talked to her once, but Christine wasn’t so sure!

Christine and Otis were married on November 1st, 1940. They had attended a Halloween party together the night before. They were married in Otis older sister Ethel’s house by a judge by the last name of Snodgrass. Although their marriage certificate lists Christine at eighteen and Otis as twenty one, she was actually only fifteen and he was nineteen. Their young age of marriage, their perseverance with one another and dependence upon God was what allowed them to remain faithfully married to one another for sixty nine years. This November would have been seventy years! It was right after they married that Christine acquired her famous nickname “kid” from Otis.

Upon getting married, they immediately moved into Otis’s family’s house where Christine, just fifteen years old, began cooking and cleaning for three grown men: Otis, his father and Otis’ other brother Glenn. In later years, Christine always stressed that the women back then had it just as hard or harder than the men. While the men worked, farming in the fields, she would make them breakfast, clean up from that, do chores, then prepare and bring lunch to them out in the field. She remembered lugging an iron pot out into the field for the men to eat their lunch so that they didn’t have to come inside and waste valuable time getting back to the field. She would clean for them, mend and make their clothes, bake, cook, help with the livestock, and keep house for them. Because of the limited space in this home, she also remembered sleeping on the wood floor many nights, giving up a bed because the men needed the beds to sleep in.

It was during these formative years in Oklahoma that Christine buried deep in her heart the knowledge that almost anything can be done or endured as long as the will is strong and the body is able. She was a hard worker all her life and did more than most women of her generation. She had no fear of anything and would tackle the most daunting challenges simply because she had lived through abject poverty and knew what it was to live simply and frugally, saving what was earned while still loving others and giving to them when they had a need.

During their first few years of marriage in Oklahoma they were peanut sharecroppers. Otis and Christine had begun to share crop for a local farmer when one of the rivers near their property overflowed. It flooded their fields and their entire crop was ruined. Otis went out in the morning and surveyed the property. He came back inside and told Christine that they were leaving. There had to be a better life for them somewhere else. They packed one suitcase and even left the furniture in the house and rode by bus to Arizona, first staying in Casa Grande where they both picked cotton and Otis repaired bicycles. Christine often told her family how she hated picking cotton. It was the worst work available, she told them. From Casa Grande they moved to Morenci Arizona. Otis went ahead of her and sent for her later. Unfortunately, when Christine got off the bus in Morenci, Otis had not yet gotten off work in time to pick her up. Some of the locals tried to direct Christine up to a local house of ill repute on the top of a nearby hill, but luckily, Otis showed up in time to put a stop to the whole thing! During their time in Morenci, they both worked in the copper mines. It was a rough town and rough work. It was because of her work in the copper mines that Christine developed a spot on her lungs which would play a role in later decisions.

Finally, on August 14th of 1944, they made their way out to Carlsbad California. They lived in a little house on Chestnut Street just west of the railroad tracks. Otis got a job as a welder at Camp Pendleton and Christine worked at a restaurant in Oceanside. She served many of the old Hollywood movie stars on their way to the Del Mar racetrack. After a few years a piece of property went up for sale on El Camino Real. Otis used their entire savings of $4,000 to buy it even though his friends told him that it was worthless land. It was during this time that they also became pregnant with their first child. A doctor counseled her to abort the baby because he believed the lung condition she had contracted in the copper mines would prevent her from successfully carrying the baby to term. Christine ignored the doctor’s advice and gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Renee. Shortly thereafter, Otis received a job offer from a company in Artesia CA and they moved there with their newborn daughter.

After just a year in Artesia, they came back to Carlsbad where Otis began building their home on El Camino on nights and weekends. Once the house was built, they continued to have children. Four years after Renee came David and five years after that, Karen was born. The house on El Camino was a treasure to many local people. They put in a swimming pool, a baseball diamond, a teeter totter, monkey bars, a go kart and a rope swing. They were continually having people over for parties and for Sunday dinner after church. Christine excelled as a hostess and loved having her whole family over to her home. They even owned a dog named Joe that would come to the back door as Christine was cooking and he would howl while she would sing!

Christine was active in the Women’s ministry at Carlsbad Assembly of God, serving as president for many years. She sang in the Choir and also blessed all those who heard her when she sang with her sisters Ruth and Frances. They were known as the Cox sisters.

Christine often made significant time for others. She had a large place in her heart for retired missionaries. She would take them meals when they were sick and look after them when no one else would. One of them, Mildred Ginn, was a former missionary to India. Christine would push her in her wheelchair down to the beach every week just so Mildred could look out over the sea to think about the land of India that she left behind. Her acts of kindness were not just reserved for missionaries but for her friends and family and anyone that truly needed a helping hand. She had an unofficial ministry to shut ins including Mamy Black and Dad Black. Her heart of compassion always had room for one more. She fell in love with little Greggy, her sister Anne’s adopted boy. She would take care of Greggy when Anne was sick in the hospital. He called her “Aunt Kissy.” She was deeply affected when he died as a young boy. She continued to speak of him throughout her life.

Christine would also take her parents, who now lived in Carlsbad, shopping every Saturday morning. She would take them all over town as her mother used the coupons she had clipped during the week. Besides all of this she loved to cross stitch. She also loved sowing and could even make her own patterns. She also had a love of reading, something not a lot of people knew about her. She loved taking walks after dinner, and being out in the weeds and the meadows. Even into her eighties, she loved being out on her four wheeler on her ranch in Oklahoma, just sitting and taking in all that the land had to offer. She remained always a true country girl, but a country girl with class. As her life began to get a little easier when she and Otis grew older, she began to show more preferences of the things she really liked. She loved shoes and also loved to shop. She loved the perfume White Diamonds and she loved to visit Damons and Drapers and Macy’s. She could be seen around town in her orange Mercedes going from place to place. She also relished getting her hair and nails done each and every Friday.

In 1971 her first grandchild, Mark, was born to Steve and Renee Tague. This began a transition of sorts in her life as she now began to be known as Grandma to a host of little ones. Mark’s little brother Matthew came along next and then Danielle, Christopher and Stephanie Vanderburg. When she and Otis moved up to the house on Ridgecrest, she began hosting Wednesday afternoon gatherings at her house. That Pizza Place pizza was served and for the next two decades the family loved gathering at their home to play pool, talk and eat. She truly kept the family together through these sorts of functions. As if that was not enough, even her great grandchildren learned to know and love her through these gatherings. Most people are not even blessed to know their great grandchildren, but Christine was able to build relationships with them that will last forever. Her ten great grandchildren were forever blessed to know and love her as Grandma Christine.

Trips were also a very important part of Christine’s life. In 1955 the family began to take trips to Yosemite every year. They loved the smell of dinner cooked by Christine over an open campfire. Yosemite was the one place Christine said that she wanted to visit again if she got well just last year. In 1978 Christine and Otis flew to Israel and also visited Morocco, Spain and Portugal. This was the first of many trips they would take together in this phase of their lives. They went on many trips to Branson, and on Mississippi river boat rides. But none of these trips compared to their own private life they created for themselves at their ranch just outside of Durant Oklahoma. They purchased the property in 1985 and then began to visit it every fall and spring, the prettiest times of year. Christine loved having her kitchen look right out over the backyard filled with birds of different types, trees and a beautiful green meadow slopping down toward the river. Family visitors to the ranch would sometimes awake to the smell of breakfast cooking and upon walking into the kitchen Christine would sing,

“Good morning to you,

Good morning to you,

We’re all in our places

With sunshiny faces

And this is the way

We start a new day.”

A song she had learned at school as a child. Evenings would find both she and Otis sitting on the back porch by themselves or with family, or perhaps preparing to go dancing. She taught Otis the two step and they danced together regularly for the last twenty five years.

All this would have made more than enough of a woman, wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and friend. But the most important part of her life was her faith in Jesus. She had become a Christian during her time in Oklahoma as a young woman. But she lived her faith alone in her family until Otis became a Christian almost thirty five years after they were married. Her prayers for her family were the major work of her life. Her children remember her as a prayer warrior. Christine was unique in that she always prayed out loud throughout her life. Karen can remember her kneeling down beside the sofa with her red Bible at the house in El Camino and praying to the Lord about each and every member of the family.

In later life, both Christine and Otis fought significant battles with cancer. Her tender care nursed Otis back to health almost eight years ago. As she struggled through her own battle, recently, she remained as un-afraid as ever. Just three days before she passed one of her grandson’s told her how brave she was and she looked at him cockeyed and said smartly, “Well, I don’t know about that…” and proceeded to ask him how his garden was doing.

Christine Vanderburg passed into glory on Thursday, May 27th at 1:12 pm surrounded by all her children and grandchildren. Her faith was undaunted, her heart as large as ever, her love for her family unchanged. As she went to be with Jesus her family sang her favorite hymn, Blessed Assurance. The first words she heard as she awoke for the first time without pain were most assuredly, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.”