Ann Estelle Hoyt

If there was a grandma superhero, Ann would be the prototype. She was known simply as "grandma" wherever she went. With her husband LeRoy, and lots of humor, energy and love for the Lord, she created a beautiful home for their family, and covered every inch of it with her magic touch. She turned a house into a paradise for curious minds, a sanctuary for troubled hearts.

Grandma made things. She made chocolate chip cookies, freezer jam like no one else could, elaborately decorated cakes, haircuts, perms, piles of knitted "babies" to donate to the local fire station, and a kids-only hidey hole under the stairs complete with cradle, ironing board, and red hot candies. Grandma made a wondrous garden brimming with sweet peas, fragrant carrots, strawberries, and even bushes shaped like bears. In the basement, she created a wall of smiling salt and pepper shakers, a room full of nothing but silk flowers she arranged for weddings. She created fresh arrangements for Eastgate Assembly of God Sunday service each week. She created a room full of nothing but dolls whose lacy skirts she hand stitched and whose faces she delicately painted with needle and thread. Her exquisite handiwork was full of diligently concealed mistakes, but, "sometimes" she said "you just have to take it like it is and be happy." And happy she was.

Grandma never stopped moving. With 4 kids, 10 grandkids and 8 great grandkids, grandma never ceased to be delighted by children. Children so efficiently scrubbed and tubbed and made to wear their Sunday best. If you sat still in church, she offered you a candy from the pocket of her fur. Children who complained of boredom were made to weed the driveway. To thirsty children she gave a tall glass of buttermilk. Children who misbehaved had their ears subjected to the wrath of grandma's pinch, and children who hurt themselves made grandma chuckle so hard she'd run to the bathroom.

In her last years, how we missed the black bottom cupcakes and the apple pie, but how we loved to simply be near grandma's wide-toothed grin and that unmistakable, cocked-brow twinkle of comedic judgment in her eye if you showed up to visit with too many holes in your jeans, jewelry where it didn't belong, or your hair too shaggy. How we loved to visit and listen to grandma tell funny, and not-so-funny stories about what is was like growing up on a potato farm during the Depression with her 7 brothers, 3 sisters, her mother, Annie (Lofdahl), and father, Harry Crabtree, learning to make something from nothing. We know that our dear grandma, mother, sister, friend, is now in heaven with her beloved husband and her beloved Savior. Our lives are all the richer because of her. We love you grandma, you will remain with us forever in our hearts.

By Nikki Tilson

Arrangements under the direction of Miller-Woodlawn Funeral Home, Bremerton, WA.