Guillermina "Mina" Petitt

Mina Petitt, an accomplished seamstress who took a sewing machine and thread to create a life for her and her youngest son, Bill. She learned her craft from her mother while growing up as the oldest of six siblings on the border town of El Paso, died on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

She told stories of sleeping in the bathtub lined with a blanket as a kid. She had an eighth-grade education before starting work to support the family. She recalled stories of freezing on the mountainside while watching her brother, Antonio, play for the Texas Western Miners because they could not afford admission.

Her appreciation of a cow tongue sandwich is mystifying.

She had a son, Ricardo, and lived with her grandmother. She loved to dance and she met her life’s love, Bill, going to Juarez with girlfriends. They married, lived in LaJoya near San Diego, before returning to Texas where they planted their roots in Lubbock.

They divorced.

She kept things together by a thread, literally. Funds were sparse, a mortgage of $59 a month was almost too much to make but she found a way to send Bill to Christ the King School where he thrived, found lifetime friends and an education that changed his life. He became a first-generation college graduate, graduating Cum Laude. Mina followed Bill’s family to the Metroplex and lived on her own for 97 years and drove a car into her 90s before giving her granddaughter, Megan, her car. Before handing over the keys she was the one to pick up the girls from school, rarely breaking 20 miles-per-hour, driving through residential neighborhoods to avoid speed and traffic.

She died on Tuesday. She is preceded in death by her parents, Luis and Paula Labrado. Brothers Antonio, Lius Jr. and Pedro and sisters Assunta and Bertha. She is survived by sons Ricardo and Bill. Daughter-in-law Julie and granddaughters Annie Petitt, Megan Morrow and great-granddaughter Sophia Labrado.

She celebrated her 100th birthday in February with the horns and guitars of a mariachi band letting the world know that her legacy will be how a person with life’s basic essentials was able to build a family with simple thread.