Thirteen years later, Otis’ congestive heart failure changed everything. She quit her job at Truth Hardware, and their now grown up boys, Philip and Russell, took care of the farm.
“We rented the farmland to the boys and I took care of Otis,” Briggs said. “When Otis died in ‘77, I rented out the land to someone else.”
Widowed with a brand new fifth wheel, she still made the annual trip down to Alamo, Texas come wintertime. And as life would have it, she met a Kansas wheat farmer by the name of Wayne Owen.
“He came down when his wife died and was looking things over,” Briggs said. “He liked to dance. I liked to dance. So we ended up dancing together three or four nights a week.”
She and this “super guy” ended up tying the knot in 1984. Post honeymoon, they continued their traditional trips to Texas and spent half the year in Kansas, the other half in Minnesota at the farm.
“When Wayne and I were in Texas, we always ate lunch at noon and watched the news,” Briggs said. “Of course, we were still eating at 12:30, so we watched the Bold and the Beautiful instead of getting up.”
Seven years into wedded bliss, she lost Wayne to cancer of the liver. She remained on the farm for as long as humanly possible, but these days, one will find her inside Ellendale’s Whispering Oaks assisted living facility.
“At dinner time, when the staff sees me back my chair up and get ready to go, they come and get me,” Briggs said. “I can’t miss my soap!”
Whispering Oaks might not be her idea of home, but she says if you have to be somewhere, this is the place to be. The staff helps her maintain personal hygiene, makes her bed every day and cleans her apartment once a week.
“They are really good to me,” Briggs said. “They are the best cooks you ever saw, wooo!”
Delightful meals aside, she realizes how important it is for her to remain at the facility.
“Before, when I broke my pelvis in three places, I remember starting up three steps to the kitchen,” Briggs said. “I then bent over to read the directions and colors on some paint cans. When I raced up, I went straight backwards.”
She doesn’t remember anything about what happened after she fell. But, according to her sources, it took three days before they found her.
“I crawled all around the garage with a stick pounding the wall and calling,” Briggs said. “I can remember thinking to myself, ‘Nobody is going to come this time of night. I might as well go to sleep.’”
Her son Philip and wife Karen did come to check on her. But, much to her dismay, they came in the front door, not the garage door like she so often did.
“They came through, looked all around and thought well she must be gone somewhere with some friends,” Briggs said. “The third day, they got worried and thought something must be wrong.”
Found lying on the garage floor, she was cold and dirty from top to bottom. Her big toe was raw too.
“I took off my shoe to try and blow the horn, but I couldn’t get enough strength to do it,” Briggs said.
That incident behind her, she takes things a bit easier and doesn’t rush to get things done. She drinks milk daily and takes calcium twice a day, because now she is recovering from another fall.
“I thought when I came here last January that by October I could go home,” Briggs said. “But now that I’ve broken my hip just walking down the hallway, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever go home.”
She doesn’t go anywhere without a walker, and wears a brace at all times. But, things are improving.
“My foot was as big as a barrel,” Briggs said. “Until I fell, I never thought about being old or not being able to raise flowers or garden or go wherever I wanted to go. It just didn’t dawn on me until it was taken away.”
What she lacks in “bad bones,” she makes up for in her peppy attitude for life. Others can sense her zest all the way across the dining hall.
“Good friends are about the best thing in my life,” Briggs said. “When you can’t be with your family, you got to have good friends.”
Social hour doesn’t last forever, so when it’s done, she has a few things to keep her mind sharp. Novels and the computer are her go-to items. Memories also keep her in good company.
“Living on a farm, a long ways from town, we didn’t have drainage like they do today,” Briggs said. “So, all the water always ended up right on one corner. We just loved to go out and play in that water, if it ever rained.”
Whenever it did, she and her five siblings moseyed on over there, only to get into more mischief. More often than not, they would grab frogs out of the knee-deep water and toss them in the mailbox.
“I got a licking from my dad like I never had before,” Briggs said.
That isn’t the only memory that has stuck with her all these years. The day her father “got his eye put out” with a piece of steel, she sat in one of Tulsa’s hospital waiting rooms with her mother.
“We went up the elevator and proceeded to wait forever,” Briggs said. “Finally, they took him in and while we were waiting, I took a hair pin out of my mother’s hair. You know those old-fashioned hair pins.”
Then, unbeknownst to her mother, she finagled behind the couch and lodged the barrette into an electrical outlet. The entire “big, tall building” went black, causing quite the ruckus.
“I was only about 2 years old, but they never let me forget it,” Briggs said.
Hospitals in general though, were never her thing. It took years for her to muster up enough gumption to administer insulin shots on her mother.
“All three of my younger sisters became nurses,” Briggs said. “I would have no part of it.”
Instead, she chose the career less employed by women. Upon graduation from business school, she took a two-week course to learn the craft of welding.
“Then I moved to Wichita, Kansas and went to work for Boeing Aircraft,” Briggs said. “I welded the brake rods on the B29 bombers. They were taking all the guys into the Army, so it got to be slim pickings for awhile there.”
There wasn’t much enjoyable about that job at all. It was hard work, as was picking cotton back in Oklahoma.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve picked cotton,” Briggs said. “I drug a 12-foot long canvas sack, filling it up until it got to be about 80 pounds. Someone always came along and shook it down for me, so it was packed down hard.”
Besides cotton, her family also raised wheat along with chickens, cattle and hogs. Every Saturday, she headed to town with her siblings and traded eggs for groceries and other miscellaneous items.
“We always had a dime to spare and then went to a movie,” Briggs said.
She also recalls doing her teacher’s laundry to buy a senior class ring. It cost a whopping $8.
“My family was big, and there wasn’t much for crops growing, so I did a lot of things out of the norm,” Briggs said.
She didn’t let obstacles stop her then, and nothing will hold her back even now.
“Be yourself,” Briggs said. “That’s all I know.”
Those eloquent, yet simple words are ones she hopes her grandchildren Garret, Denise, Scott, Robert and Kenny will continue to aspire to. The same goes for her great grandchildren, Andrea, Gavin and Rylee.
“Family is important,” Briggs said.
