Mary Sue Dunn Turnipseed was born Oct. 13, 1930, at home in the Annetta community of Parker County. Raised on a farm during the Great Depression, she grew up with limited means and had little access to the world beyond her rural surroundings. She celebrated her 95th birthday last week.
“I went to Germany back in 2018 and I got to see Auschwitz, where the Holocaust happened and everything that happened during my mom's lifetime … I asked her about it when I came back, and I asked her what she thought about all that when it was going on, and she said they didn't know anything about it because they didn't have communications. They didn't have a way to get that news to them, because they were living out on a farm, and so basically cut off from the world,” youngest daughter Sheila Dunn Dutschmann said.
“And that was strange to me, that they didn't know the world events that were going on. She said, ‘the only way they would have known is newspapers.’ I don't even know if they got the newspaper because they were poor. She grew up that way, where they were, everything they ate came off the farm, and so they were kind of isolated to that. And so, from that she's gotten into this world. Maybe that's why she's so interested now and getting involved. Because when she was young, they didn't have anything like that to be involved in,” Dutschmann said.
