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Mary Linda Kouns left presents from the good past for San Antonio youngsters. The visitors at her memorial service introduced toys for youths in want.
SAN ANTONIO — Gifts arriving to needy youngsters in San Antonio have a benefactor who by no means noticed the toy donations. She didn’t thank those that gave to the drive as a result of Mary Linda Kouns had handed away.
“We never got toys. We got a bag with an orange and candy canes,” Mary Dolores Grabowiecki mentioned. “But we were happy with that.”
Grabowiecki, who lives in Blanco, watched her sister’s last days up shut because the 70-year-old took her last breath. Kouns, in accordance to Grabowiecki, had systolic coronary heart failure and Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS).
“I always knew that my sister was going to die in my arms,” she mentioned. “And just before she took her last two breaths, I put my arm on her shoulders. And I whispered to her; I love you, Linda, I love you.”
The dying was robust on Grabowiecki, who misplaced considered one of her two remaining sisters. Their mother and father, Joe and Mary Gephart, had a son who died from pneumonia as a baby, she mentioned.
“Daddy said he prayed that God never let him lose another son. So he gave him nine girls,” she mentioned.
Each of the San Antonio-born ladies obtained named Mary.
“Mary Jo, Mary Rose, Mary Josephine, Mary Elizabeth, Mary Ann, Mary Angeline, Mary Ethel, Mary Dolores, and Mary Linda,” Grabowiecki mentioned.
They even numbered the Marys for folks. Grabowiecki and Mary Linda had been Mary 8 and Mary 9.
She joked when somebody hollered ‘Mary’ of their residence, it was like saying the rosary.
Her father, she mentioned, labored as a policeman and ultimately a metropolis worker. He needed to identify Mary Linda–Mary Christmas.
“Mother said, I don’t think so, Joe,” she mentioned.
But their father might have gotten his method. Before Kouns’s dying, the mom of two and Army widow mentioned her ultimate providers with Grabowiecki.
Instead of flowers, they’d ask folks to donate an unwrapped toy for the San Antonio police’s Blue Santa Program. Kouns would honor her love for kids, Christmas trees, her father, and her son-in-law, who presently works for SAPD.
“My sister did what she wanted to do,” Grabowiecki mentioned. “She made a lot of children happy.”
Between funeral attendees and donations from throughout the nation, the Kouns assortment was greater than $750. The household delivered the toys a number of days after the memorial service to SAPD’s North Patrol.
The accomplished mission introduced tears to Grabowiecki’s eyes. Her sister, a karaoke firm proprietor, would have turned 71 on December 20, a day she did not get to have a good time.
She was ready to give needy youngsters a really ‘Mary’ Christmas.
“I hope Christmas morning when these children see these toys—that she’ll smile down from heaven,” Grabowiecki mentioned. “And let these kids know some way or another. That somebody cared. Linda cared.”
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