Anne B. Spearman

Anne B. Spearman left us while sleeping peacefully on December 10, 2020. She was born Anniebelle Graves in Dinwiddie, Virginia on March 16, 1923 to the late Ella Lottie Washington Graves Stockman and the late Joseph Edward Graves. She was 97 years old.

Anne spent her formative years in Virginia growing up on her maternal grandparent’s farm with her younger brother, Paul and many cousins. At the age of 14, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her family and was a proud graduate of Gratz High School. Her family had grown to include a loving step-father Arthur Edward Stockman and a younger sister, Blanche Marie who both preceded her in death.

Anne’s young adult life would include falling in love and marrying three times. She also found that she had a taste for fine and expensive clothes, foods, and accessories. She had champagne tastes in attire and cuisine. She delighted in pampering herself with elegant clothes, trinkets, and expensive delicacies. She was a coffee connoisseur.

She was a generous woman who made sure that her nieces and nephews had everything that they needed and some of the finer things that she wanted them to have. She especially enjoyed shopping at some of Philadelphia’s large department stores and purchasing beautiful coats and dresses for her nieces.

As a young woman, she trained and worked as a beautician for many years. After a long illness, she decided that she needed steady work and found a job as a live-in personal care assistant to an elderly mother and a disabled son. She cared for them for almost 30 years, retiring in 1991.

She was a natural caretaker and nurturer. She proudly looked after her brother and sister even as they became adults and took care of her mother and sister as their health failed. Although Anne did not have any children, her nieces and nephews were her pride and joy and she was always there for them.

Anne’s other interests included reading, politics, and talking…about anything and everything. She loved to talk about her life, her family, and all of the events that she had witnessed in her lifetime. She was lucid, expressive, and comprehensible to the end.

Having been a personal care assistant for over 30 years, she had high expectations of the people who cared for her when she could no longer care for herself. The personnel at Manor Care in Sewell, New Jersey met and exceeded those expectations. She praised everything from the conversations to the food. She felt at home there.

She leaves to cherish her precious memory, her brother Paul E. Graves, Nieces; Paulette Hill (Bernard), Karen Nicholas, Lisa Walley, and Shelley Lyons (Anthony), Nephews; Rodney Nicholas, Derek Nicholas (Monica), and Guy Graves, loving cousins Jacqueline Jones, Joshua Matthews (Sylvia), Roselyn Jones (Calvin), Reta Stewart, a host of great nieces, nephews, cousins and special friends; Pedro and Barbara Gucatan.

“A Life Well Lived Is Worth Remembering”