Who Am I?: Grandma Bonny

My Grandma Bonny was born on January 30th, 1930 in Northern Iowa. She grew up on a farm near Kensett, Iowa. She was the third child out of 6 born to Peter and Amy Van Sabben. Bonny wrote down many of her memories of growing up on the farm. I will write these down in the future. Bonny graduated from Kenset High School in 1948. After high school, she worked as a teacher for a short while before becoming engaged to Mr. John Evonoff. Shortly before the wedding John died in a plane crash. It was then that Bonny married Boyd in 1950. They had four children, one of whom died shortly after birth. More on that later as well. Bonny worked for the Iowa Veterans Hospital for 35 years before retiring. After retirement, Bonny remained busy traveling and volunteering her time and energy. In May of 2007, Bonny was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was in stage four by the time they found it. She passed away on July 6th, 2007.

One of my favorite memories of Grandma Bonny was went she came to visit us. There was a snow storm shortly after she came. When the storm passed she took us outside and played "Goose and Fox" in the snow. I remember her falling on her face as one of us tried to tag her the fox. Another favorite memory is Christmas. We almost always spent Christmas Eve at her house. There was a puzzle we did every year, along with sleeping on the floor by the Christmas tree. In the mornings the kids would run around the tiny house waking everybody up to open presents and go through the stockings.