Look what I found! A delayed birth certificate for Bluford Napoleon Richards’ wife! I have thought this whole time that her name was Willie Dee Sanders. Come to find out, it’s actually Willie Dinges Sanders. Interesting.
And because of this delayed birth record, I was able to look up her death. Willie died on July 26, 1978 in Denison, Grayson County, Texas.
Now, to find her family in Texas!
I don’t have much information on Willie Dee Sanders. I know, from stories, that she was a very sweet woman. What follows is what my mother told me:
Great Aunt Dee was Great Uncle Blu's wife (Bluford Napoleon Richards). She was a very interesting animal lover, probably because they had no children of their own. She had a parakeet that she loved a lot. I don't remember it's name, but I think it was a blue one. She would chew food, open her mouth, and the bird would fly to her and eat what she had chewed . . . from her mouth, that is. I was always amazed at that. Our parakeets didn't do that at our house. She also had a white poodle, and I also don't recall it's name or gender. That was the first time I'd seen a toy box and special bed for a dog. It was a cute little thing, and she spent a lot of time playing with it and treating it as if it were a baby. Uncle Blu was killed in a car accident when I was in 1st or 2nd grade. There was a handy man who would take care of their house after that and would drive Aunt Dee wherever she wanted to go . . . in the yearly brand new car she would buy. She decided at some point, maybe in the early 1970s or late 1960s, that she would move from Memphis to Texas to be near her family. Out of gratitude to the handy man, she gave him her house. I believe it was on Cherry Drive in Memphis. Soon after my uncle was killed she gave me his tie stick pin made into a necklace. It was filigree with a diamond in the middle and 2 sapphires, one at the top and one at the bottom, on a platinum chain. I wore that necklace all the time, until the night we were in San Diego, California in the mid-1970s. It somehow fell from my neck without my realizing it and was lost, probably around Coronado Hotel. I cried for a long time having lost that bit of him, but I still have the memories of visiting the two of them in Memphis.
