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Faith, Patriotism Buoyed Woman

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By LAURA FRAZIER The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 24, 2007

Updated: 11/21/2007 06:56 pm

BRANDON - Just out of high school and married barely a week, 18-year-old Winifred Dean saw her husband off to war in 1944 and boarded a bus for home. While Walter J. Dean joined his World War II field artillery unit bound for Okinawa, Japan, Winifred Dean prayed for her husband's safety.

Dean said her prayers were answered at the end of the war when her husband returned home safely. The couple spent nearly 40 years together in Brandon, where they built a home and raised a family before Walter J. Dean's death in 1982.
Winifred Dean said two things that kept her going while her husband was away in 1944 - her faith and the country's patriotism - give her strength today as the last surviving member of the Dean family.

In her apartment at Hawthorne Village Retirement Community on Lumsden Road, she has surrounded herself with family photographs and treasures handed down throughout the years as, one by one, her spouse's grandparents, parents, siblings and, in 1982, her beloved husband, passed on.

She is quite fond of two ornate, hand-carved Japanese tables that once belonged to her late sister-in-law. An antiques appraiser told her the pieces could be the only two of their kind in the United States.

One of her most treasured possessions, though, is a time-worn letter written 88 years ago to her mother-in-law, Mildred Stearns, by Stearns' friend Ernest Frederick, an Army private stationed in France during World War I.

Frederick wrote the letter on Nov. 11, 1918, the official end of the war, when the Allies and Germany signed an armistice to cease hostilities on the western front.

"It was such a beautiful letter, I have kept it all these years," Dean said.

She turned to the letter for solace after the Sept. 11 attacks and said Veterans Day ceremonies held at Hawthorne Village this year set her to thinking about it again. The letter's timeless, patriotic message, Dean said, should be shared with the Brandon community.

"I think reading the letter would make anyone very proud to be an American, very thankful to live in the states and to think how many people have given their lives so that we can have freedom," she said.

Dean said she has seen a return to patriotism in recent years that heartens her.

"For a long time, before Sept. 11, people had gotten to where they were not very patriotic and didn't have much respect for the flag. So many of us didn't realize how thankful we should be for the privilege of living in America."

Reporter Laura Frazier can be reached at (813) 657-4523 or lfrazier@tampatrib.com.

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