Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Mattie Lee Stem Box 1919 - 2015
Mattie Lee Stem Box, a pioneer in deaf education for the Fort Worth area and a noted Christian servant, passed away Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015. Funeral: 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, at the Rusk Church of Christ, with Brothers Robbie Arrington and John Bob Cody officiating. Interment: Douglass Cemetery. Visitation: 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Autry Funeral Home in Jacksonville.
Born May 23, 1919, and raised on a cotton and dairy farm near Slidell, Mattie determined early that she would not spend her life picking cotton. Braving opposition, she earned degrees in English and Spanish in just three years from the College of Industrial Arts (now TWU) during the Great Depression, working her way as a nanny, housekeeper, cook and typist. After teaching at the Collinsville High School, she married the late Donald Lyndon Box.
As their family grew to seven children, she returned to the classroom and taught 10 years in Newark Elementary, Eagle Mountain Elementary and Fort Worth's Forest Hill Elementary. Known as the teacher who could reach the most difficult child in school, she was recruited for a new challenge in 1960, to become one of the first teachers in the new Tarrant County Day School for the Deaf, where she taught for seven years and served five years as a supervisor. In 1964, soon after her alma mater became Texas Woman's University, she earned her master's degree in deaf education. She later earned 47 postgraduate hours attending summer classes at colleges known for expertise in deaf education: Texas Christian University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Massachusetts, New Mexico State University and Gallaudet College for the Deaf. In 1966, she and her late husband, Donald Box, who educated hundreds of Fort Worth school children about fire safety as "Fireman Box," adopted their eighth child, a 6-year-old who was deaf.
Mrs. Box retired as a special education consultant with Region XI Education Service Center in 1980 and opened Romance Antiques in Central Arkansas. In 1989, the Boxes retired once more and moved to East Texas where they were active in the Rusk Church of Christ. She was noted for visiting and sending notes of encouragement to friends, family members, missionaries, neighbors and strangers in hospitals and prisons, anyone who she thought needed a kind word.
Among her many professional associations were the Council for Exceptional Children, Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, Conference Executives of American Schools for the Deaf and Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf. She was listed in "The World Who's Who of Women" and the International Biographical Center in Cambridge, England.
She was preceded in death by her husband; her parents, Frank and Virgie Stem; son-in-law, Lyndel Gililland; daughter-in-law, Jan Box; and grandchildren, Robert Gililland and Camille Box. Survivors: Her children, Ramona Gililland of Smithville, Don "Mickey" Box of Richland Hills, Marquita Moss and husband, Gary, of Austin, Melany Shook of Arlington, Tahna Cody and husband, John Bob, of Nacogdoches, Jon Lee Box and wife, Lynn, of Chantilly, Va., Camille Moore and husband, John, of Australia and Gayle "Dorene" Garza and husband, Chano, of Ringgold, Ga.; 21 grandchildren; 34 great-grandchildren; and brother, Taylor Stem and wife, Jackie, of Denton.
