One Special Lady
Edna Payne

Port O’Connor has some very special people living in it and Edna Payne happens to be one of them. Her life’s ambition is not to only make quilts, but she wants to give them away! Edna said about her making the quilts, “I’m better at giving than I am at receiving.”

Sixty years ago, Edna moved from Indiana to the Houston area. Her husband Clyde who had served in the Navy during WWII and afterwards had worked in a baking company in Houston passed in 1976. Their three daughters were young when their father passed. Edna worked different jobs in electronics, for the Postal Service, and with Walmart. Because of ankle surgery she couldn’t stand and had to let go of her job with Walmart. She moved to Port O’Connor eight years ago.

Edna lives a few blocks from the water and drives a mobility scooter around town. What she thinks of living in Port O’Connor she summarized in this statement, “I like where I live. I can’t think of living anywhere else.”
Edna is 92 years old. She has been sewing all her life and started making quilts when she was a child. Back then they called the quilts “crazy quilts” since they were made of whatever they could find.

Pictured below is a quilt Edna made and recently donated to the Port O’Connor Library. Quilts she has made have been used as door prizes at the Senior Luncheon at the Port O’Connor Community Center and at the Coffee and Conversation at the Port O’Connor Library. Quilts have also been given away to family and friends. It’s just as Edna put it, “God has put me here for this purpose.” We think so, too, Edna!

Assistant Librarian Margaret Claiborne shows one of the quilts donated to the POC Library by Edna Payne.