I hadn’t heard of anyone washing and ironing for a neighbor until I discovered, while going through Grandma Leora Wilson’s 1959 diary, that she had blessed her next-door neighbors with just that. 

Blanche and George Fell lived in a small house on the corner north of Grandma’s house when I was a girl. They attended the same church, as did Great Grandmother Laura Goff when she could. Blanche and Leora were deaconesses at the same time, and Fells gave Leora rides to church, especially during the winter.

According to the Guthrie Center Times, which published local hospital notes, Blanche Fell had been discharged from the hospital in early September, 1959. But a month later, she fell and broke her arm. 

Her neighbor Leora, age 68, was busy that month–washing and installing storm windows, helping with a funeral, raking leaves, digging gladiolas and cannas, caring for her own mother (Laura Goff, age 91), taking bouquets of flowers from her garden to church, and patching at the hospital. But she made time to help her neighbors by doing the Fells’ washing, hanging it on the line, and doing up their ironing.

A few years later, in March, 1966, Leora took a pink hydrangea to Blanche who was in the hospital. Then on November 11, 1966, Blanche had a bad heart attack and was in the Guthrie County Hospital until her death at the end of December. She was only 73.

Leora collected 50-cent donations from neighbors for flowers and ordered a yellow potted mum for the funeral and a memorial for the church. Leora not only attended the funeral, she helped with the dinner for the family.

Blanche Fell was born in 1893, just three years after Leora. I wish I had a photo of Mrs. Fell. I vaguely remember Grandma’s good neighbor lady.

George Fell 

I don’t remember George Fell (1892-1978) at all, but he was a Guthrie County Supervisor during the 1930s. According to Small and/or Abandoned Cemeteries, Guthrie County, Iowa, by the Guthrie County Genealogical Society, he provided key local landmark and cemetery/grave data used by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) historical records.

By the late 1950s and into the 1960s, he transitioned into municipal leadership and served as the Mayor of Guthrie Center, overseeing major local infrastructure developments like municipal water surveys, paving projects, and river routing improvements.

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Thanks to Dave Miller for locating George Fell’s obituary and trying to find one for Blanche. From George Fell’s findagrave page we learn that Blanche’s first name was Eva and that they had no children to remember them.

After Grandma Leora’s death in 1988, her house was sold, along with the one on the corner that Fell’s had lived in. The new owner of both properties tore down the one on the corner and expanded Grandma’s little house. You would never recognize it today.

And all of this because I discovered that Grandma had washed and ironed for her next door neighbors after Blanche Fell fell and broke her arm.