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Mary Davis has butterfliesIsome in-between divorces whenBy BILL MOFFITT Record Staff WriterThere’s a Roswell woman who has butterflies everywhere but in her stomach.The urge to collect butterflyshaped decorations started about 30 years ago, she recalls.Mary Davis, 62, of 2500 S. Virginia Ave., estimates that she now has about 3,500 butterflyshaped and butterfly-decorated items in her three-bedroom home. 'Just about everything at her home has a butterfly somewhere on it or in its design.There are butterflies on the rugs, in pictures, butterfly wind-chimes, necklaces, earrings, belts, music boxes, candles, tissue boxes, laundry hampers, soap, ashtrays, and on containers for sugar, tea and coffee.She has butterfly sculptures, tinted plastic butterflies on wires in the windows, on the china, on every towel, wash cloth and shower curtain, and even a butterfly comforter with matching pillow cases.She likes sewing butterfly patches on her new skirt, changes her butterfly shower curtains when she wants a different color and even has a jewelry box and a deodorant dispenser with butterflies painted on them.There’s a butterfly night light to light the way, a butterfly to adorn her soft soap dispenser and most of her numerous butterfly pins are mounted on pool table felt boards which hang about the house.Her butterflies come from garage sales, department stores, and even foreign countries.One crystal bell from Germany has a butterfly delicately etched into it and another piece consists of a real butterfly encased in silver, but most of her collectionMrs. beauty contest openThe Mrs. America Pageant has begun accepting applications to its 50 statewide preliminary competitions, said Betty Hasbrouck of Albuquerque, New Mexico state director of the pageant.Winners of the preliminary competition will advance to the 1984 Mrs. America finals, to be taped for national television at the Las Vegas, Nev., Hilton Hotel.is worthless except for its “sentimental value,” she says.Her children and friends add to her collection which includes pieces form India, Hawaii, France, Taiwan and the Philip-has a butterfly on it, I’ve got one of them,” she said.Looking through her six-room home, it’s hard not to be looking at a butterfly somewhere.Magnetic butterflies of rope, plactic and marcrame adorn herme another pin and it sort of snowballed.”Mrs. Davis still keeps her eyes open everywhere she goes for new butterfly treasures.Almost all of her jewelry has a butterfly in it somewhere.Even so. Mrs. Davis’ facina-tion with butterflies was not a life-long addiction.“I didn’t particularly like them before,” she recalls.But after getting those first two pins, she’s been on a butterfly binge ever since.Part of her collection came from a son and her daughter who picked them up while in the military overseas, she said.Some recent arrivals were brought back by friends on vacation, she added.Mrs. Davis enjoys her butterflies and likes to piddle” with various arts and crafts.She crochets and embroiders and figures she has $200 worth of beads hanging in her living room doorway that she has restrung, with some on a bedroom door that are worth even more.Mrs. Davis says she enjoys keeping children at her home for couples who work, and the children she keeps sometimes make or buy butterflies for her collection and her clientele, which now includes everal children whose parents she loot • ed after when they were small, she said.She bounces with a positive at-titude that overrides any negative forces that may have come into her life.Mrs. Davis was widowed 25 years ago and has never remarried after the “loss” of her fourth husband, Claud Davis.“Claud disappeared about he 1960s,” Mrs. Davis said softly “He had stomach cancer and tuberculosis in a lung and he told me if he ever found out that he would be an invalid that he’d just get up and leave and I’d never hear from him — and that’s what he done.”But she has the children she keeps and her butterflies to keep her busy, she said.She likes reading about different ones but doesn’t have very many real ones because hayfever and asthma keeps her from chasing around the woods for them, she explained.Like anyone, she has her regrets, but she doesn’t let them get her down.“I regret that the kids sufferedthey couldn’t have what they wanted,” Mrs. Davis said. “You learn from the bad not to repeat it and you grow.“When you’re bitter, it eats you up and it hurts you — not the person you’re mad at,’ she continued. “So, you just roll with the punches.”pines, she said.She writes on butterfly stationery complete with butterfly stickers ana a butterfly stamp for imprinting wax seals.Mrs. Davis even has butterfly teapots and a butterfly-shaped bulletin board.“If it’s made like a butterfly orit4T-IAiV■refrigerator and one soon becomes amazed to find anything in the house without a butterfly on it.“About 30 years ago a friend gave me a pin with a butterfly on it,” she told the Daily Record. “A little later another friend gavei04S *IL■vka)V»a¥ m$e-•K:$'’A%‘(jAvJr.ifyAt ,Jrr'-'-s til®-. ,v .:: ■ •■ i mm}I ’ TSip* ij klt;*r «iaL mi*.aterk: /.*■•AS.*. ..•• -Mt :vv--AS*w'n.*Bill Thompson photoMary Davis sits back and enjoys some of the hundredsof butterflies she has In her home1801 West Scfond St Roswell. (Sew Mexico 622-6961, i!i:IALL SPECIALS GOOD THROUGH THANKSGIVINGBEERMICHELOB REGULAR AND LIGHTLOWENBRAU LIGHT AND DARK *26*tMacLIQUOR *10”—RON RICO RUM LIGHT , 12”JIM BEAM................................, 75l™12”IMPORTERS VODKA.............USHERS SCOTCH ,.7Sl,.12”GILBEYS GIN..........................,.,it,Bll”J A B............................................750Ml10”BACARDI DARK.............................7LORD CALVERT............................l7«7”SMIRNOFF.................. lt.8”SOUTHERN COMFORT..............77.8”EVAN WILLIAMS GREEN lt*8”SEAGRAMS GIN .............7»»l6”WINEYOUR CHOICE OF FREE WINE GLASSESOR CASH OFF ON OVER 100 BOTTLES OF IMPORTED AND DOMESTIC WINESBRANDYE J .......................................750Ml9”DOMECQ PRESIDENTE 7»»il0”KORBEL........................................7»«l7”MOUQUIN..................................77.™7ma1801 West Second St. Roswell, flew Mexico 622-6961
Newspaper Details
Roswell Daily Record
Roswell, New Mexico, US
Sun, Nov 20, 1983
Page 30
Full Page
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USA 03 Feb 2022
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