Mary Naomi Melton

Naomi Melton passed away Tuesday evening, November 22, 2005 at the Mitchell County Hospital in Beloit, Kansas at the age of 95 years.
Mary Naomi Nowels was born November 3, 1910 on a farm about 1 ½ miles northwest of Glasco, Kansas to George W. and Matie Gray Nowels. She grew up with four sisters Alice, Nellie, Maxine, and Betty. A sister Florence died at the age of three months. Naomi also had three brothers to put up with: Melvin, Guy, and Quentin.
There were no electric lights or running water in the old house with wood and coal stoves. Naomi spent her childhood working on the farm, milking cows, working in the fields with horses, cutting sunflowers and other weeds out of the cornfields. She also had some playtime with her siblings. Naomi attended the Glasco schools, walking the 1 ¾ miles many times on cold winter days through the snow. She played basketball for Glasco High School and helped the girls win some games.
Naomi was brokenhearted when her mother Matie died on March 9, 1926 at the age of 41 years and one day. Her parents were born on the same date but ten years apart; her father on March 8, 1875 and her mother on March 8, 1885. Naomi loved her grandfather Stephen Nowels very much. He was killed wile raking hay on his son, Guy's farm west of Glasco in 1917. While raking hay with two horses and a dump rake, a train came along. The steam engine blew the whistle and the horses ran. He fell in front of the rake and the teeth killed him. Stephen was a Civil War veteran, lived through the war, and then was killed raking hay on his son's farm.
On August 15, 1928 Naomi married Charles Markwood Melton of Simpson, Kansas. They had been friends for awhile. He was a baseball player and a fast driver. He loved to turn corners on the dirt road and come into her home faster than anyone else. They lived on the banks of the Solomon River south of Simpson where they had cows, hogs, chickens like most farmers in those days. Charles farmed with his father Mark Melton. Later, Naomi and Charles bought their own farm east of Beloit and just south of Highway 9. They lived there several years and then bought a house and retired in the great city of Simpson.
Naomi was the mother of two children. Her daughter Delores lived near Las Vegas, Nevada and was born in 1931. A son was born in 1932 but lived a very short life.
After Charles died on December 6, 1977, Naomi moved to a nice place at 504 East Main in Beloit, then to 108 Putter Drive, a senior housing area in Beloit. She later went to Las Vegas to live with Delores and Harold until late 2003 when she returned to Beloit to live in Hilltop Lodge.
She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, daughter and son- in- law Delores and Harold Goff, an infant son; sisters Alice Wagner, Nellie Martin, and Maxine, brothers Melvin and Quentin Nowels, brothers-in-law Bill and Jerome Melton.
Survivors are her grandchildren Roxanna Goff and two children of Las Vegas, Nevada; Gordon Goff, his wife and two daughters of Everett, Washington, Mark Goff and daughter of Naperville, Illinois. In addition, Naomi is survived by her sister Betty Bray of rural Concordia, Kansas; one brother Guy Nowles of Portland, Oregon, and a brother-in-law Max Melton and wife Margie of Stilwell, Kansas.

Funeral services will be held at 10:00 A.M. Saturday at the McDonald Funeral Home. Interment will be in the Glasco Cemetery. Friends may call from 10:00 A.M. until 8:00 P.M. Friday at the McDonald Funeral Home.