Mrs. Dannia Elaine Leontine Fowler McMichael

Mrs. Dannia Elaine Leontine Fowler McMichael, 84, died Wednesday, December 31,
2003. Service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Loraine First United
Methodist Church. Burial will follow in the Wallace Ranch Cemetery under the
direction of Kiker-Seale Funeral Home, Colorado City. The family will receive
friends at the funeral home from 6 until 8 p.m. today.

Dannia Elaine Leontine Fowler McMichael, Elaine, to all of us who knew and
loved her, was born in Tyler, Texas, to the late Rev. D.C. and Elva Mary
Wallace Fowler on September 30, 1919. The second of three children, she spent
her early years in Tyler on the campus of Texas College with her father during
the school year, while spending most summers in Mitchell County, West Texas, on
the home place of her maternal grandparents, D.W. “80 John” and Laura D.
Wallace.

Elaine was an avid and successful student, attending Prairie View State
University and receive her bachelor’s degree in home economics in 1939. After
graduation she began her teaching career in Nacogdoches, Texas, at E.J.
Campbell High School, teaching homemaking classes. Shortly after her arrival in
town she met a young Nacogdoches beau, Alfred C. McMichael, her beloved “A.C.,”
and they were married on the Wallace Ranch on August 28, 1941. Upon A.C.’s
return from service overseas in World War II, the couple migrated to Los
Angeles where their only child, Alfred Jr., was born in 1949.

Continuing her teaching career, Elaine became an elementary school teacher for
the Los Angeles Unified School District, primarily at 49th Street Elementary
School specializing in kindergarten, pre-school, reading and multi-culture
education. A devoted and highly regarded teacher, she was chosen by the LAUSD
to be a master teacher in the early Head Start Program. She received her
masters’s degree in education from the University of Southern California and
continually urged all of her students, relatives, friends and colleagues to
constantly pursue knowledge and personal betterment through education.

While in Los Angeles, Elaine and A.C. were long-time, active members of Holman
United Methodist Church. Elaine was also involved in a number of social
organizations including National Tots & Teens Club, Inc., and the Los Angeles
Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She loved to play bridge and was a long-
standing member of a Los Angeles bridge club. Upon retirement in the 1980s, she
and A.C. returned to Mitchell County to live on the Wallace Ranch. She
continued her community service, becoming active in the Midland Chapter of The
Links, Inc., the Mitchell County Child Welfare Board, North Loraine Chapter,
the Texas Homemakers Extension Club and many other local organizations and
social efforts.

Elaine departed this realm on December 31, 2003, in Los Angeles after a long
illness. She was preceded in transition by her elder sister, Vonceil Fowler
Muse of Dallas and recently lost her devoted husband and lifelong beau, A.C.,
after sixty-one years of marriage. Along with a host of loving friends and
family, she is survived by her younger brother, D.C. Fowler, and his wife,
Dorothy W. Fowler, of Mitchell County; her son, Alfred Jr.; and grandsons, Keir
and Kai McMichael of Los Angeles; and her oldest and longest and best friend
from Prairie View, Nacogdoches and Los Angeles, Camille McBroom Tatum of Los
Angeles.

Elaine was a lady in every sense of the word; she was loved and appreciated for
her kindness, grace, understanding, compassion, warmth and wisdom. She radiated
love, strength, integrity and nurturing sensitivity — her presence will be
missed in the lives of the many she touched.

Kiker-Seale Funeral Home, Colorado City.