Wiona

Haythorn

Wiona (Nono) Julia Brooke Haythorn passed away on Tuesday, April 7th, 2020 at Southern Pines Senior Care Community at the age of 95. She was born on the 27th day of February 1925 in Osteen (formerly Saulsville, after her great grandfather) Florida. When she was 2 years old her mother died at the age of 17 in childbirth. Both Wiona and her sister Betty were raised by their grandparents on a country homestead not far from Deltona, with no indoor plumbing or electricity.

Her grandfather had two large gardens and made cane syrup with a mule driven press and a kettle shed. What the family couldn't grow or raise themselves, they bartered for with cane syrup. Once a month, a judge would come to town and her grandfather would leave in his buggy saying he was "going courtin." He was a community leader and very involved in local politics.

Her grandmother was an educated woman and was brought down from North Florida to teach school. Wiona and Betty learned many things about the world from her, and Wiona set her sights on being a missionary when she grew up. Every morning, her grandmother rose before dawn, baked a loaf of bread and cooked a big breakfast on a wood burning stove. She was a short woman with a very big heart and passed on the values that guided Wiona throughout her life.

Wiona, Betty and other local girls played in the pine and palmetto palm forests of south east Florida, in a small playhouse their father built for them and in the cane syrup kettle when it wasn't filled with cane juice. She said many times that she had a wonderful childhood.

With black hair and dark complexion, she was always asked to take the role of a Native American when any school performance called for one. She asked her grandmother once if she had any Native American blood in her and her grandmother replied, "Go ask your grandfather, he has more Indian in him than I do." They told her that her name came from the Siouan language and meant first born daughter. They told her many family stories of her ancestors but would always warn her not to tell anyone outside the family. Native American heritage was not generally thought of as something to be proud of at that time.

The family lived through the Great Depression and Wiona said that since she was young and since they were self-sufficient, she didn't notice any difference in their lives at first. But later knew that others would have starved if not for government programs. She got her first job and was supporting herself when she was 14.

Before America entered World II, in her late teens Wiona and her friends manned a watchtower on Merritt Island, combing the waters for German submarines with binoculars. On the weekends she organized dances for young military men, announcing the dances with chalk on the sidewalks. She enrolled in a course as a radio operator at Stetson University. On a stroll through the town with two of her girlfriends, three sailors began following them, trying to get their attention. The girls sat on a park bench and the boys picked up another bench and moved it in front of them. The boy who sat in front of Wiona, William (Bill) Westley Haythorn, later became her husband. They got married in San Diego on (December 3rd, 1944) shortly before Bill shipped out for the Pacific war with Japan.

They had six sons, lived in many parts of the country, as well as Germany and Korea, and traveled extensively throughout their adult life. Wiona led an active life. In addition to raising six boys, she was a weaver, painter, jeweler, and an art instructor, an entomologist for the Smithsonian Institute, and a Creek Elder. Throughout it all she never forgot the lessons she learned as a child, a curiosity for knowledge, a love of nature, a compassion for others and an ability to see beauty in everything.

A gathering of friends will be scheduled later to celebrate her life when the virus is no longer a threat. Her ashes and that of her husband Bill, will be buried in Osteen, Florida along with one of her sons and several of her relatives.

Wiona was preceded in death by her husband William Westley Haythorn on February 9th, 2008, and her son David in 1977. Surviving members of the family include five of her six sons, Wayne, Marty (Lindajo), Dan, Tom and Paul, nine grandchildren, Brian, Hillary, Manot Van Rocket (Don), Maggie Goter, Billy (Anne Marie), Brooke, Taylor Smith (Justin), Collins Carlton (Lori), and Joe, and 6 great-grandchildren, Kaitlyn Okjela, Troy, Trinity, Gabe, Andi Smith and Thatcher Smith, as well as a number of extended family members.