Vera Kellogg Hunt-Melton -  1934-2020

Loved animals, tolerated people, loved to make you laugh

Vera Kellogg Hunt-Melton, 86, passed peacefully to go dancing with her beloved Jim, on April 21, 2020 with her daughter by her side at Cedar Hill Continuing Care Community in Windsor, VT. She fought a long hard battle with dementia as well as cancer, but was still cracking jokes and making people smile till the very end.

She was born Jan. 15, 1934 in Roanoke, Virginia, the daughter of Rev. Daniel Robert Hunt and Vera (Forbes) Hunt (known to everyone as Honey).

Vera was a lifelong Hokie Fan - she loved to tell the story of how her parents lived above a drugstore at Virginia Tech while her father was a student and she was a baby. She and her young parents lived with several different family members during her early childhood, until finally settling in a house built by her father on his portion of the family estate called Shadeland. Vera attended Oakland School and William Fleming High School in Roanoke, but moved to Clifton Forge VA when she was a junior in high school. She graduated from Clifton Forge High school in 1952. In the early 1950's she sang with a music group called the Star Dust Trio at colleges and community dances. She always kept in touch with her Roanoke friends and went to as many class reunions as she could for both schools, including their 50th in 2002. She was so excited when classmate Richard Hamlett married movie star Debbie Reynolds, and the famous couple would come to the reunions. Vera got a huge kick out of telling Debbie that her first real date with Jim was to see her movie "Tammy".

In 1953 she began training at the Chesapeake & Ohio Hospital in Clifton Forge as an X-Ray Technologist.  After passing her State Boards in 1955 she returned to Roanoke to work at Jefferson Hospital in 1956, and later worked for a number of physicians in Roanoke.

Vera loved to tell the story about how in 1956, after a short-lived move to Chicago and an equally short-lived engagement with "Dr. Wrong", Vera moved back to Roanoke and got an apartment on Highland Avenue with some other girls. None of them had cars, but the handsome young bachelor who lived in the basement apartment had a great big red Chevy convertible and offered to give them rides around town. All the girls had a huge crush on him and were all sure he would pick them, and Vera was forced to ride in the back seat by the other girls. But she bided her time and eventually, he invited her to sit in the front beside him. She said that she knew from the minute she laid eyes on Jim Melton that she was going to marry him, and she did, on May 2, 1959. The newlyweds had a dream honeymoon driving that red Chevy convertible down to Miami, complete with a drive on Daytona beach. Vera and Jim's love song was "The 12th of Never".

Jim, a draftsman at GE, and Vera settled in Roanoke, close to her old family home. Melissa, their only child, was born in 1964.

In the late '60's Vera left the medical field and switched paths to her true passion, animals. She always said she preferred animals to people so she went to work as President & Executive Director of the Roanoke Valley SPCA, an animal shelter. She was a regular guest on Kathy Thornton's "Panorama" Show on WDBJ-TV from 1967 through 1973 with pets of all kinds available for adoption at the SPCA. She spearheaded numerous building upgrades to the shelter, and in the mid 1970's, with the help of Mr. Raymond Barnes, a well-known Roanoke attorney, they acquired the Kimball Memorial Fountain, which once was in the front of the N&W Railway Station, and put it in the newly opened SPCA Pet Cemetery. It was one of her proudest accomplishments.

In 1975 G.E. transferred Jim to a plant in Mebane, North Carolina, and the family moved to Elon. To get to know the community, Vera became an Avon Lady and loved it, and sold Avon for years. In 1980 she ran unsuccessfully for NC House of Representatives. Soon after, Vera served as president of the local Humane Society, and in the mid 1980's established a Lost & Found Registry for Pets called "North Carolina Pet Finder". NC Petfinder began as  an Alamance county-wide registry on index cards in her home office, and within a couple of years expanded to include Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. It was also in this period that she started a line of pet sympathy cards using her own artwork and poetry.

In 1989, when Jim retired from GE and Vera retired from Petfinder, the party really got started! One of Vera's many favorite sayings was "It's never too late to have a happy childhood!" Being born during the post-depression era shaped Vera's formative years and resulted in a lifetime of frugality, including the hoarding of everything from bread ties and rubber bands, to collecting all the childhood toys she didn't get until her retirement years. She collected everything: antiques, vintage toys, costume jewelry, dolls, books, glassware, music, anything Christmas, and a closet full of sparkly sweaters. The family joke was "if you could pick it up and hold it, she'd buy it. If it sparkled she'd buy 10."

She loved "yard-sailing" and "thrifting" and everyone at "GW" (Goodwill) knew her by name. She went into the Antiques & Collectibles Business with a booth at a local antique mall and that gave her the excuse to buy all the toys she never had as a small child. They would go out every weekend to yard sales and thrift stores, where she would buy discarded items to fix up and resell at her booth. Jim eventually had to build 2 additions on the house in Elon to hold all her treasures.  Over time she became a professional hoarder, and one seasoned auctioneer nearly had a heart attack when coming in to appraise the very full house. Melissa is still recovering from five yard/estate sales and a full year of another heroic auctioneer selling the house's clean-out items.

Vera had a wide variety of interests over the course of her life. In addition to her passion for animals and anything sparkly, she had an amazing dollhouse in the 70's that got her an article in the local paper; as the daughter of an Anglican priest she was active in the church; Incredibly creative, she painted, sketched, wrote poetry & stories, made jewelry, loved anything Victorian and Christmas. She restored antique furniture & made carousel horses out of old hobby horses and other woodworking projects with Jim; She was a real fashion plate, always color-coordinated, coiffed and made up -  from Avon lady in the 70's to Red Hat Society and costume jewelry in her 50's & 60's, she loved to dress up til the end.

She loved music, especially 50's doo-wop and early rock and roll.  She loved playing the piano and often told the story of how her parents couldn't afford a piano or lessons for her, so she would go across the street to her friend's house and listen to her piano lessons from the porch, and afterward the friend would teach her what she'd just learned.  Vera never learned to read music, but could play by ear and was still playing whenever she could well into her 80's. Her absolute favorite song to play on the piano was "What Child is This?" Even towards the end of her life, when she'd lost her motor coordination and her memory, she could still pick out that tune on a keyboard.

Vera was passionate about family history, so much so that when she was given a stash of over 200 letters between her grandparents spanning from their courtship in the 1890's through her grandmother's untimely death in 1915, (only 6 months after the birth of her father) she sat down at her new computer and transcribed every one of them. She designated herself the family historian after her father died, and loved any opportunity to re-tell the old family stories that her father used to tell at gatherings.

Vera was a woman who loved her TV - just ask anyone who knew her. She loved comedies like Carol Burnett, Laugh-In, SNL, talk shows, soap operas, true crime dramas, and old movies.

When her grandchildren came along in 1999 and 2001 she was faced with one of her life's greatest challenges - what to call her herself now. An unconventional grandmother, she didn't like any of the regular grandmother names, and after months of agonizing over what she wanted to be called she finally settled on "Grandma Doll", incorporating Jim's pet name for her. When Ian was born, Vera spent months creating the most incredible baby book ever - filled with everything from her favorite children's songs and nursery rhymes, to family stories, history, and photos from both sides of the family, and even used illustrations copied from her grandmother's baby book from 1902. She loved her grandkids dearly and got great pleasure out of shopping for them, and watching tv with them when they would come down to visit.  She turned her middle school-age grandkids onto crime shows like Forensic Files and Burn Notice, despite the fact that those are NOT kid's shows!

When Jim died in 2005 everyone thought she'd be lost without her one true love, and wouldn't be able to function without him. Well, did she ever prove everyone wrong! She picked herself right up and taught herself to do the stuff he'd been taking care of over the years, and what she couldn't do herself she was quick to pick up the phone and hire someone to help. She was heartbroken by his loss, but her spirit was never broken.

In 2010 at age 76, Vera was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, only a few months after having taken care of her younger brother Bob, who had been battling his own stage 4 Merkel cell cancer all year. She fought it like a true warrior, going through radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy, and making people laugh all through it. No matter how scared she was she didn't show it; she always wanted to make people smile. During her first round of radiation in December of 2010, she always put on her sparkliest Christmas sweaters to wear to the Cancer Center to try to cheer up the other patients, greeting and talking to everyone in the waiting room with her. She was a true medical miracle as well; the five-year survival rate for stage 4 colon cancer is 14%. She survived 10 YEARS.

Vera told her daughter Melissa at the beginning of this fight that if she lived through the surgery, that her promise to God would be to take Darlin' around to nursing homes to bring the residents joy. She did exactly that in 2015 when Vera moved to an assisted living community in Vermont to be closer to Melissa and her family. She initially had no interest in crossing the Mason-Dixon Line, but was ok with Vermont once she got there permanently because the mountains felt familiar, and she could pretend she was "home".

She brought with her way more furniture and clothes than anyone thought could be stuffed into a one bedroom apartment - her toys, music boxes, year-round Christmas decorations, all her red hats, her "fuzzy four-legged children", Darlin' and Sonshine, and of course, her sense of humor. She loved letting Darlin' ride on her walker seat (and driving the RA's crazy), going to music performances, doing art & craft projects, going on field trips, watching her crime shows with her RA's, and chatting with her neighbors, all of whom she loved, even though she couldn't remember anyone's name. She always felt guilty about that. She had a spit fire mouth and loved to tell her stories - about her dad, Father Bob the Priest and her mother, Honey; all her pets through the years; about her years as an X-ray tech and later working with animals. She was very proud to be the founder of the Village at Cedar Hill Red Hat Society, which she presided over as self-proclaimed president, attending parties until just a few weeks before she passed. One of her caregivers shared about how Vera's ability to laugh at uncomfortable situations made things much less embarrassing for the staff, and that Vera always made her feel like she was doing a great job. That, and how Vera LOVED her iced tea with 2 sugars.

She was well-known for all her "Vera-isms":

"Vera, How are you?

"I was better, but I got over it. "

"If I had a brain I'd take it out and play with it"

"I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid"

"Bless your little heart"

"Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise"

"Always stand up for what you believe in"

"Don't throw that out - you never know when you might need it"

"I grew up once and didn't like it so I wasn't about to try that again"

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood!"

"As my sainted Daddy used to say, "Ain't it the beautiful truth!"

Vera is survived by her devoted daughter Melissa Melton Snyder, son-in-law Steve Snyder, grandchildren Ian & Virginia Snyder all of Weathersfield, VT; her sister Meriam Carpenter of Covington, VA; nieces & nephews, Beth Cross and her husband Bill of Roanoke, VA; Joseph Carpenter IV and his wife Lori of Chesapeake VA; William Shupe and his wife Beth of Dallas, GA; Ricky Shupe of Galax, VA; Tina Burford and her husband Brett of Dallas, TX; Carrie Wright and her husband Tommie of Woodford, VA, Randy Melton and his wife Evelyn of Fredericksburg;

great-nieces and great-nephews, Katie Cross, Joseph Carpenter V, Jacob, and Emma Carpenter, Dalton Burford, Sarah Burgess, Daniel Shupe; and cousins Jean Lipscomb Butcher of Roanoke, Edward L. Lipscomb of Elon, N.C., J.C. Croft Jr. and wife, Barbara of Boca Raton, FL, Dr. R.L. Croft Sr. and wife, Rowe of South Hill, VA, Waller Hunt III and his wife Liz of Fredericksburg, VA; Dr. Keith Kellogg Hunt Jr and his wife Carmelita of Roanoke, VA; Robert Hufford Hunt, of Salem, VA; and Burks Hunt of Gainesville, FL; and her beloved fur-daughter Darlin'.

She was predeceased by her loving and eternally patient husband of 46 years, James Edwin Melton; her parents, Father Bob and Honey Hunt; her brother Daniel Robert Hunt, Jr.; and many fuzzy 4-legged children including several generations of Cubbies, Buff, Pamper, Tuffy, Miss-Tee, Mischiefs 1 & 2, Prissy, Bee-Bee, Christie, black cats Jet and Sonshine 1 & 2 (They were the "sons" she never had), Calico the guinea pig, and Chancy the devil dog.

Her daughter Melissa wishes to thank all her healthcare providers and caregivers who have loved her and cared for her over the years, including the Cancer Center at Alamance Regional Hospital, Home Instead of Alamance County, Visiting Nurses & Hospice of Alamance County, everyone at the Village at Cedar Hill, especially the superheroes in Memory Care, and finally, the Bayada hospice team who helped usher us through her last few months. You are our heroes, saints, and angels, and we love you all.

She was always homesick for Roanoke, and now she's home. Vera and Jim are interred in the Hunt family plot at Evergreen cemetery in Roanoke, VA. A celebration of life will be held when Covid has passed and it is once again safe to have family gatherings.  In the meantime, say a little prayer, and hug your loved ones if you can.

Sparkle on, Vera!

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the animal welfare organization, Alzheimer's Association, or Hospice of your choice. The Knight Funeral Home in Windsor, VT has been entrusted with arrangements. Her complete obituary can be found at www.knightfuneralhomes.com.

Forget me not

Forget me not,

Remember Dear you're all I've got.

Don't  sigh,  don't cry,

This is not good-by

And even though it's time to go…