"Mammaw," Bea Gamel, passed away on March 6, 2008. 

A beloved mother and grandmother, our “Mammaw” was born on December 28, 1920 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma to Richard Austin Mallow and Carrie Lou Smith.   In her early twenties she moved to Houston, where she began a 30 year career of teaching Kindergarten in the Spring Branch school district at Pine Shadows, Shadow Oaks, and Westwood Elementary Schools.

Aside from teaching young children, Beatrice’s greatest joy in life was spending time with her family.  She is survived by her four children, eight grandchildren, and five beautiful great-grandsons.  She was incredibly proud of each one of her grandchildren and great-grandsons, and their lives were truly blessed by her countless hours spent with each of them reading books, playing games, walking to the park, watching baseball games and dance recitals, collecting shells at the beach, and letting them each know that their Mammaw thought that they were “winners”.  She will be greatly missed.

Some of my favorite memories of Mammaw include spending long weekends at her house with Carter playing games, building huge forts using every piece of furniture and blanket available, playing in the ditch, taking walks in the park picking up pecans, and playing card games like "kings on the corner" and "crazy eights."  We did some crazy stuff at Mammaw's house, like raking all of the pine needles off the roof (at age 10 or so), spending all day gone playing in the big ditch, and jumping from the 10m high-dive.  Mammaw was always a little oblivious, but she was supremely loving and fun to be around because she was always ecstatic to see her family.

The thing I will miss most about my Mammaw is her constant assurance that I would be awesome at everything I did.  Every time I would see her she would ask if I was the CEO of my company yet.  When I would respond "no, I've only been working there for a year", she would look astonished and let me know that it was only a matter of time before I was running the place because I was so smart.  She thought her grandkids were the most talented, smartest people on the planet and she told us that she loved us often.

 My favorite memory of Mammaw was spending the night at her house with Carter.  She had a huge house with four bedrooms, but Carter and I slept on the floor in her bedroom in sleeping bags on either side of her bed.  Being little boys, we obviously weren't interested in bedtime when she was, so we would stay awake and goof off while she was trying to go to sleep.  On several occasions we would pull all the shoes out from under her bed (she stored all of her shoes there), and threw them over the bed at each other.  The bed was very tall, so most of the shoes either landed on her or hit the walls or furniture.  Mostly she would just go "woo!", start laughing, and ask us what we were up to.  She tolerated our shenanigans because she loved us and loved kids.  The world needs more Mammaws.

I will always remember her as the smiling, supportive grandma in a huge, pink hat and high-water pants, with SPF90 sunscreen on, underneath an umbrella, going on walks in the park and taking trips to the ball field to watch her grandsons be the best players on the field. 

Here are some pictures from her life.