Ella Mae Jensen

Ella Mae Holloway, of Cottonwood, was born at the old Hillcrest General Hospital above Silver City New Mexico on April 23, 1940. Her father Orvil Davis (O.D.) Holloway (cowboy, miner, and long time resident of Grant County) joyously welcomed the fifth child born by his wife Callie Mae Holloway (nee Stinson). 17 years later they were all assembled again as the same doctor (Dr. Watts) and the same nurse delivered the first son of Ella Mae and her husband Wade Albert Jensen (in the very same room). Times were hard when she was young and her dad had to take work where he could find it. They lived for a while in a tent in the Black Range near Kingston New Mexico were OD worked in an underground mine. They lived way out on a friend\u0027s ranch when OD was fixing fence. Ella Mae spent most of her early years in the small ranching community of White Signal New Mexico. The house there was just above a scenic little arroyo about a half-mile from the one room school house. There was a little spring near the house that her dad OD dug out to use as a cool box to keep the milk and butter. It was quite a hike down the arroyo for her older brothers to fetch water from the windmill. Ella Mae was working as a car hop in Silver City when Wade Jensen offered to take her for a ride in his chop top Ford with a wooden crate for a passenger seat. She quit her job right then and they took a drive to Deming. She was 15 at the time. They were married November 16, 1956 when she was 16. Ella Mae decided that Wade needed a vocation, so she bought a mail order electronics course. He wasn\u0027t happy about the money spent, but finished the course anyway and went on to a career in telephony. That moved them to Las Cruces New Mexico where they had two more boys over the course of just a few years. Ella Mae\u0027s eyesight deteriorated with each pregnancy. Doctors didn\u0027t understand the problem at the time and even did exploratory brain surgery to try to determine the cause. Many years later she learned it was an avoidable condition that caused her retinas to detach with high blood pressure associated with pregnancy. Unfortunately, she was rendered legally blind (20/200) by the time she was 21. Wade changed jobs and moved the family to Gila New Mexico in 1964. Ella Mae wrangled the 3 rowdy boys and saw to it that they fed the horses. She taught the boys (and their friends) to square dance. She ran the concessions for rodeos and gymkanas, did fundraisers and organized a prize-winning 4th of July parade float with gunfighters (on which she was dressed as a bawdy dance hall girl!). Ella Mae took some college courses in Silver City, and would often drive (in spite of her limited vision) to the highway where she would catch a ride with friends to her classes in town. She missed a class when she drove the off the left side of a bridge leaving the Scout half submerged on its side in an irrigation ditch. After that she usually made sure she had one of the boys with her to tell her when she was too far to the left or right when driving. In 1971 Wade changed jobs again and they ended up on the Indian reservation in northern Arizona. Ella Mae discovered that the State of Arizona had a training/work program for blind people and she jumped at the opportunity. She obtained a concession for a rundown little candy shop across from the Indian hospital in Fort Defiance. In a short period of time she turned it into the go-to location for breakfast and lunch for many miles around. She taught the boys work ethics at the snack bar (which also served to keep them out of trouble and allow them to save money for college). Wade bought an airplane and flew her back and forth to meetings in Phoenix where she advocated for other blind people. After her youngest son graduated high school, Ella Mae decided she was getting off of the reservation. Wade found some apartments they could invest in and they moved to downtown Phoenix. Ella Mae picked up the concession for the huge cafeteria in the ADOT building in the Capitol complex. She doubled the cafeteria business, then doubled it again. She got to know prominent politicians (including Gov. Rose Mofford) who would go out of their way to eat at "Ella Mae\u0027s place". In the mid-90s, Ella Mae\u0027s kidney failed and she retired from food service industry. Wade died unexpectedly in 1997 so she sold the airplane and apartments and eventually bought a house in north Phoenix. She got a new kidney then moved to Camp Verde where she participated in civic activities, visited with friends, and hosted family get-togethers for the last 13 years. Friends and family knew Ella Mae as a beautiful woman who overcame adversity with good humor and hardheaded determinism. Lately she would tell you that she had a hole in her head, only one eye, one knee, one boob and someone else\u0027s kidney but by golly she\u0027s going to have good attitude about it! She never hesitated to jump first and think about it later, but she always managed to get where she was going - even if she couldn\u0027t see where that was! Ella Mae passed away on February 6th, 2016 at age 75. Her direct descendants are 3 sons, 10 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. Her "family" was much larger. There are no public services planned. An online guestbook is available at www.westcottfuneralhome.com