Tributes

October 8, 1921 Lydia Dell Fisher was born in Mereta, Tx just east of San Angelo. She grew up in Bell County attending Iduma School where the unofficial motto was I do m’best. Being the early 1930s and the only girl in a house full of 9! boys, she was charged with keeping the house clean. Once, she told her brothers to pick up their boots. When they ignored her, she picked up the boots and pitched them into the fire. You’ve never seen boys run so fast. I’m sure they thought twice about ignoring her again. Maybe it was from growing up in a house full of boys or maybe it was just her nature, but Lydia loved outdoor activities. She used to swim in the Lampasses River near Ding Dong. She loved to play baseball and basketball with her brothers and spending the summers with Aunt Ethel and Uncle Mack in San Angelo. She would later play baseball with her grandkids. Her first job was as a nanny for two sons of a doctor and his wife in Lampasses. Obviously, she was more than qualified. While in Lampasses, she met Jackie Gleason. Yes. The Jackie Gleason. She went out on one date with him, guess she wasn’t over-the-moon about him. At around 19, she moved to San Antonio and went to work at Kelly Field in Supply delivering parts all over the base riding a scooter. There she met her soon-to-be husband Lester (Les) Collins. They were married October 5, 1944 at Grace Lutheran Church in San Antonio. In 1959, they bought a ranch just north of Boerne where they lived for almost 30yrs raising cattle, sheep, and Linda, their daughter born in Feb of 1946. Lydia could often be found in her yellow culottes, white blouse and straw hat driving her riding lawnmower across acres of land because she wanted the ranch to “look like a park.” It did. Thanksgivings and Christmases on the ranch were often a full house filled with the families of her daughter and much older stepdaughter Jackie - kids, grandkids, great grandkids, and cousins running around with and sleeping in every available room in the house and bunkhouse. Everyone was fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner with delicious food prepared by Lydia with amazing efficiency due to her expert planning. There was always chocolate sheet cake, sprinkled with chopped pecans, her specialty. The Christmas tree was done up with golden ornaments, lights and garland. Always gold. Obviously, she liked things to be just so. When Lester’s health began to fail, they sold the ranch- mostly to keep him from getting on the roof, half-blind, to do repairs. Lester died on Christmas Day 1990. Lydia was diligent and responsible most of her life. After Lester died, she moved into a new apartment specifically with a bedroom upstairs so she had to climb stairs to keep in shape. She even collected stacks of travel documentary videotapes to give her something to watch anticipating a time when she was too frail to get out. Although she began to have some mental problems at the end of her life (for a while she was convinced that she was marrying the Amazing Kreskin) Lydia remained a powerful matriarch of a family spread across the United States until her death at 99 1/2 years old. She outlived her parents and all 9 brothers and is survived by her daughter Linda Sauter, 7 grandchildren, many great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, and many more nieces, nephews, grand and great-grand nieces and nephews. Godspeed Lydia Dell, your legacy will live on for generations.

Tributes

Lydia Dell Fisher Collins

October 8, 1921 - May 11, 2021