In the picture of her here, she is not her pretty granddaughter with the black hair, she is the one who is much older.  Myrtle Day Mitchell was my grandmother who made a living as a teacher before she retired in 1971.  She loved animals, was creative and artistic, and, an excellent cook IF it wasn't cooking a Thanksgiving dinner.  She was married to Milton Mitchell till the day he died on President's Day, 1994.  She had three children, Gerald, Quinna (my mom who is in this picture with her to her left), and, James Bruce Mitchell.
     Near the last half of her life, Myrtle started writing more and more poetry, especially through the 1970's and late 1980's.  Her best poems revealed a Christian hope in the after-life, the most famous of her poems is called "I Said A Prayer For You Today", which, if you type into your web browser, you will see three others claiming credit for it, but, the one who is getting MOST of the credit for it, is the inventor of the ice rink cleaning machine.  I know she wrote it, though, because she was the type who contributed poems to big books of amature poets back in the early 1980s, and, although the books featured her poems with her name and picture, someone must have really loved that poem and took off with it.  For the longest time, NO one knew who created it.  But, if you want to see who wrote it, and, see and hear how Myrtle sounded in 1984, I will try to post the link here.
     Anyway, she never had to be hospitalized.  She suffered short term memory problems in the last seven years of her life.  I asked her what it was like to be losing her memory, and she said, "It's like being half dead".  Still, her life's motto was a simple one.  It went something like, "Be grateful to God and never complain."  Because she knew things could be so much worse.

By the way, if interested, go to LiveLeak, and type in "I Said a Prayer For You Today".  You'll probably be able to see if if you can't see it here.

 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fdb_1236466301