Wanda Nadean Sprouse was born in the shadows of the Sans Bois Mountains in McCurtain, Oklahoma. She was the daughter of unmarried 18-year-old Pauline Sprouse, the youngest daughter of local minister, James Grant Sprouse and his wife, Laura Sprouse.  Pauline was resolute in having her baby, ignoring those who suggested alternatives. She delighted in the thought of being a mother and looked forward to the life ahead for her and baby Wanda.

Three days later, Pauline developed a fever, experienced stomach pain, and bleeding. She had developed puerperal fever, or a more familiar name "childbed fever".  It affected women within the first three days after childbirth and progressed rapidly. Within three weeks, Pauline was gone, and baby Wanda was an orphan. Relatives and friends in Tennessee and Oklahoma were interested in taking in the baby, but her grandfather, Reverend Sprouse, took charge of the baby and decided the best place for her would be in the home of her grandfather and grandmother.

The Reverend and Laura raised Pauline's baby girl for eight years.  On April 5, 1934, a news item was printed in "Local Happenings" in the latest issue of the Haskell County-Chant News.

It read: J.G. Sprouse & Rev. F.F. Tilden of the Methodist Church left Tuesday on a business trip to Oklahoma.

The business trip took the two men to the Methodist Children's Home in Britton, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City. After eight years, seven months, and ten days, Wanda Nadean's grandfather, with the help of Rev. Tilden, made arrangements with the Home for Wanda Nadean. Less than two weeks passed after Rev. Sprouse and Rev. Tilden's news item of "business" appeared in the local paper, when a letter arrived at the door of Rev. and Laura Sprouse from Britton, Oklahoma. It read:

Dear Grandpa

How are you I am fine. I like it here and my friends name is Charlotte, Babe Ruth, and Henry Etta Earnestine Doris. I hope that you will come out soon.

We half to go to bed before dark. Daisy takes care of me and if you can come this week, tell aunt Edith that I will write her soon. When you come over bring someone with you. I can go to town with you.

Tell Aunt Edith that I will write her soon.

With love Wanda.

Wanda had been placed in an auto two weeks before, along with all of her belongings, including a doll she held in her hands, and Rev. Tilden drove her and Rev. Sprouse to the Methodist Children's Home. Once arriving, she held the doll and said goodbye to the only father figure she knew in life. All the girls were lined up on the stairs to welcome the "new girl."

"Grandpa insisted that I take the doll, so I tried to carry the doll carelessly, dangling it with one arm, so they wouldn't think I was a baby," Nadean recalled. "I was more of a tomboy and didn't care for dolls. I don't remember anything else about that day. I must have blocked it out of my memory as it must have been very hard when Grandpa left."

And as the years slipped by one after another, the Methodist Children's Home became Wanda Nadean's home. She would come visit McCurtain at Christmas and some summer breaks and receive a little money in cards and letters on birthdays, but the Methodist Home clothed and fed her. And she was surrounded by friends who she recalled with a smile. But the Methodist Home began to show its age. There was word that a new home was soon to be built in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

"About that time (1941), I had reached my teenage years and my friends, and I spent many hours complaining about the conditions in the home," Nadean said. "Mr. Hubbell was planning on finding foster homes for the older children and I didn't like the sound of that at all."

Wanda wrote to her grandfather, after she secretly stole out of the home and delivered her letter to the post office personally, so the staff couldn't read what she had written. She asked him if he would ask Aunt Edith and Uncle Hobart if she could come and live with them.

"Aunt Edith said he came up to the house with my letter and Uncle Hobart told her that it would be up to her. She told Grandpa that if they came for me that I was to know that my home was with them and no one else. They got the letter on Saturday, and they came for me on Sunday. All my belongings fit into one box, and with a few farewells to my friends, I headed back to eastern Oklahoma. I was going home. I didn't look back."

Two years later Wanda Nadean Sprouse graduated from Bokoshe High School. Her time with Uncle Hobart and Aunt Edith were happy times.

"At sixteen I wanted to be a missionary," she said. "I never thought about being a nurse, but my aunt put that idea in my head, and I really wanted to please her."

In 1943, Nadean packed up and traveled to Fort Smith, Arkansas to begin her three-year nursing education at St. Edward's Hospital. Her first job after graduating was in Shawnee, Oklahoma. The war had just ended, and all the GIs were coming home.

"The first time I ever saw Speck Reynolds I was coming out of the delivery room with a newborn baby, and I gave the baby to a nurse, and he was standing at the end of the hall," Nadean said.

Nadean's and Speck's first date was at a Shawnee football game in September 1946.

"I didn't know anything about football," Nadean admitted.

The attributes of Speck that Nadean loved was that he was so much fun and light-hearted, just like her. He had such a good sense of humor.

"I loved his family," Nadean said. "And not having a family, we would gather at the Reynolds' house and then go out dancing."

They were married on May 29, 1948, at St. Benedict's Catholic Church in the priest's office in Shawnee. Neither family was happy about the marriage due to differences in religion, among other concerns. Aunt Edith and Uncle Hobart were concerned that Speck was a college student and didn't have a steady job. Aunt Edith told her the day of the wedding, "Don't worry, if it doesn't work out, you can always come back to Bokoshe." The happiest people at the wedding were Nadean and Speck.

Speck and Nadean welcomed their first child, Kathryn Lenore, in 1949 in Shawnee,  and the following year Speck graduated from the University of Oklahoma and began his journalism career working at different newspapers throughout Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas, while Nadean found nursing jobs wherever the couple landed.

Nadean converted to the Catholic faith in 1951, joining Speck, who was a "cradle" Catholic. Stephen Grant, 1952 and Mark Anthony, 1953 were babies #2 & #3, both born in Clinton, Oklahoma. Baby #4, Matthew Gregory, was born in 1955 in Anadarko, Oklahoma. It was in that same year that Nadean noticed her reflection in a downtown window that her gait was not normal. She had also been experiencing weakness in the hands and had been having a few falls. She decided to have a check=up.

The doctor called her in after the exam and told her she had CMT (Charcot Marie Tooth) Syndrome. CMT is a degenerative nerve disease that usually appears in adolescence or early adulthood. Symptoms include muscle weakness, decreased muscle size, decreased sensation, hammertoes, and high arches. It is not life-threatening, but the doctor advised her that she would probably be in a wheelchair by the time she was 50 years of age. And told her that there is no cure for CMT.

Upon hearing the diagnosis for her and the possible effect on her children. , Nadean calmly stood and walked to the door to leave. But the doctor was puzzled. He had expected emotional fireworks and tears on this diagnosis for a young mother. He stopped her and asked her "why?" and "how?" she could receive this terrible news with such calmness and serenity. She said simply "I'm a Catholic" and walked out the door.

Nadean continued walking through life, her head held high. She and Speck didn't stop moving. They had babies #5, Mary Paulette, in 1957, #6 Christian Hobart, in 1958, and #7, Philip John, in 1960; all born in Great Bend, Kansas, while the typewriter keys were pounded by Speck, and the floor rounds were covered at St. Rose Hospital by Nadean.

After moving to Poteau, Oklahoma Speck and Nadean welcomed baby #8, Beverly Lynn Mary, in 1963. Speck worked at The Poteau News and Nadean worked at Leflore County Memorial Hospital. In the fall of 1966, the Reynolds family moved to Edmond, Oklahoma where Speck worked for the Edmond Sun & Booster and Nadean worked at Edmond Memorial Hospital. It was in 1967 when Speck and Nadean greeted baby #9, Amy Edith. Five boys and four girls. Nadean and Speck were managing a baseball team.

It wasn't until Nadean was 50 years old that she began needing brace supports for her legs, but that didn't deter her from continuing her profession.  Her nursing career was full steam ahead with stops at Autumn Acres in Edmond, Oklahoma and Logan County Memorial Hospital in Guthrie, Oklahoma.  After a sojourn to South Bend, Indiana working at St. Joe's Medical Center, Speck and Nadean returned to Oklahoma and Nadean began working in medical records at various nursing homes in the Oklahoma City area. She began using a cane, but she didn't have time to worry about her physical limitations; she continued walking across the floor and out the door, armed with love and faith.

It was in July 1994 that Nadean discovered she had half-sisters – Juanita Noah, Loyce Bell, and Joyce Brownlie. She made contact with them and during that Summer of 1994 a reunion was planned and the Reynolds – West family met for a beautiful weekend in Poteau, Oklahoma and Red Oak, Oklahoma.  Nadean and her sisters stayed close throughout the years, and she felt a few of her missing puzzle pieces were put back into place. She lost her dear sisters, Loyce in 2014 and Joyce in 2019.

"For a weekend we were family," Nadean recalled. "I love my sisters."

It was in the Spring of 1995. Nadean was still working at the age of 70 as an RN consultant for a nursing home company in Oklahoma City. She would travel around the Oklahoma City area to review charts and sign off on the paperwork. She had been nursing for over 48 years. It was at a nursing home on a spring afternoon that Nadean was doing her regular check of the home's medical records. She was scanning the resident list when she came across a patient's name "Edna Wiser". She knew that name. Edna was formerly Edna Sprouse, before she remarried in 1950, after losing her first husband in a mine explosion in 1922 in McCurtain, Oklahoma.  Edna, and Nadean's mother, Pauline, were best friends while both were living in McCurtain. Edna was married to Pauline's brother, Burrell.

It's funny how life comes full circle and reaches out to you, giving you something so unexpected, so rare but oh so precious. Nadean had not seen Edna for over 40 years. She would see her here and there while visiting Bokoshe in the past, but here she was in the same nursing home where Nadean worked. It was a chance meeting – a one in a million.

When I walked into the room, Edna said "Nadean, you look like all those Sprouses." Edna, 90 years old, hugged her dear friend's daughter. Edna had photos from the past of Pauline. Photos Nadean had never laid eyes on until that day. And some of those photos were given to Nadean. Edna told Nadean stories she had never heard before. Stories of Edna and Pauline. Edna filled in so many missing pieces.

"I visited Edna every day I worked and took care of her those months, even though it really wasn't my job," Nadean said.

Edna M. Sprouse Wiser passed away on September 20, 1995.

Mom retired at the age of 72, still not needing a wheelchair. She and Dad returned to Norman, Oklahoma and lived until Dad passed away in 2000.  Mom moved to Oklahoma City after Dad's death and again relocated to Bixby, Oklahoma and onto Tulsa, Oklahoma, living next door to her daughter Paulette and Debbie. She ultimately moved in with Paulette and Debbie for two years, until making Aberdeen Assisted Living Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma her home this past year.  Mom lost her son Matthew in 2021.

It wasn't until she moved to Aberdeen that she finally used a wheelchair regularly – forty years after a doctor predicted she would be in a wheelchair by the age of 50. Nine children. Twenty grandchildren. Twenty great-grandchildren. An ocean of friends. A healer of patients. A daughter. A wife of 52 years. A mother who gave love unconditionally. A grandmother who gave love unconditionally. A great-grandmother who gave love unconditionally. And a Catholic who prayed daily for those she loved. All those lucky ones.

Mom took her last breath in a warm bed surrounded by family on Thursday morning, January 11, 2024, and went home with grace and peace.

"I've always thought that my life is the way God wanted it, and it was perfect for me; and I've always been happy. I have had a happy heart."

"I want there to be dancing after my funeral; and I will be watching and loving every minute of it."