Anne Greenway and twin sister Rachel were born in Fort Stockton, Texas, on May 16, 1931, to Franklin and Ruth Silliman.
Anne, Rachel and older brother Ed were raised in West Texas, going to elementary school in Fort Stockton and attending high school in Kermit, Texas, where she graduated in 1948.
Anne Silliman headed off to attend college in Missouri, but dropped out shortly thereafter to marry her high school sweetheart, John Greenway, on Oct. 8, 1948. That marriage lasted until John died in March 2019, over 70 years later. They started their lives together in Kermit where John drove a concrete truck and Anne worked as a telephone switchboard operator. They moved to Odessa, Texas, for a couple of years while John was in the Army and started their family. Anne was the devoted housewife and mother.
They moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, where John attended college for a degree in education and started working as a drywaller and painter. They then moved the growing family to Fort Worth while John went to seminary for schooling in theology. While there, John started preaching as a fill-in for small churches in the area and they deepened in their love of God and of each other.
Responding to a newspaper ad, John got a drywaller/painter job in Cheyenne, Wyo., and they moved north. Anne was always the supporter of John’s decisions. John was ordained as a minister soon after the move and again started preaching as needed in small churches. Anne often played the piano for those occasions.
John got a job teaching school in Shirley Basin, Wyo., in the center of nowhere at a uranium mining camp. There were 100 single-wide trailer houses, the mine office, a small grocery store/service station/post office and the first-through-seventh-grade school. It was 12 miles to the nearest pavement, 50 miles to nearest town with stores and a high school. Snow levels reaching up to the window sills (covering 12-foot high fences, depending on winds) and temps as low as 65 degrees below zero. Anne toughed it all out.
John and Anne took on leadership of a small church, over an hour from home, as bi-vocational pastor. John would lead singing and preach, Anne would play the piano and teach Sunday School. After several years, they moved to Medicine Bow, Wyo., where John taught in the local high school and they were 45 miles closer to the church. In Medicine Bow, Anne taught some piano lessons and did a lot of sewing and making clothes for friends and family.
Around 1970, they moved things to Scandinavia, Wis., to be close to Anne’s twin and her husband, Fred. John and Fred had been friends since high school. John got a job teaching and again started bi-vocational preaching, often dependent upon Anne for music.
Anne was mostly a busy housewife, mother and grandmother, but through the years in Wisconsin, she worked at different times as a grocery store clerk, paint store clerk, ceramics teacher, day care in the home, piano teaching and even in an assembly line situation, culling potatoes at a potato farm.
Anne’s interests through the years were her children and grandchildren, sewing, ceramics, reading/studying the Holy Bible and knitting booties for any kiddie in need.
They moved to Elk River in 1990 for John to work remodeling with son Kevin. Again they got involved in the small church there. Anne worked some, filling in occasionally at the post office and at a local tree nursery during planting season.
Anne was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in about 2005 and John quit working to spend more time with her. With her declining mental health and John not far behind, they moved to Troy in 2010 to be closer to doctors and Kevin.
They were moved into an assisted living facility together in Moscow in 2012 where they were well taken care of until John’s death in March 2019. Anne then continued to suffer with her mental and physical frailties, mostly alone through the pandemic, and died with minimal family members present on Nov. 24, 2020.
Anne leaves behind her twin sister, Rachel Beckner, of Brownwood, Texas; son Kevin Greenway, of Troy; daughters Cynthia Smith, of Pflugerville, Texas, Diann Selvig-Drews, of Huntley, Minn., Melissa Olson, of Bowler, Wis., and Heather Bullard, of Columbia, S.C.; eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Anne and John loved Elk River and Idaho. Her body was cremated and will be interred alongside her husband of 70 years at Three Pines Cemetery in Elk River at a later date. No services are planned.
