By Ed Simmons, Jr.
cpreporter@lcs.net
Well-wishers and friends packed Calvary Baptist Church in Bowling Green on Saturday afternoon to honor Vickie Cecil, 65, whose gentle smile and sparkling eyes greeted a generation of Sunday School students and welcomed customers at her nearby shop on Main Street, The Country Angel.
"She loved children and loved people," said one of her many friends, Doris Walters. "She was selfless and didn't know a stranger. Even when she was so ill, she worried about others." She also busied herself in the church kitchen for events and "loved greeting people," said Doris.
Her love of children was also noted by her minister, Rev. Mel Covington. "Her face would light up any time a child was around her, which was a beautiful thing to watch," he said. "She just had a way of bringing joy into people's hearts."
Bowling Green's mayor, David Storke, praised her too, saying she was "a very important part" in the lives of his sons Wesley and Ashby who attended her Sunday School class.
At her 2 p.m. memorial service was "the biggest crowd I've ever seen at the church," said her husband of 37 years, Billy Cecil. "It was a testament of what she meant to the community."
He was at her bedside the night of March 10 when she passed on. In the last stages of cancer, it was her second bout with the illness. Despite the pain, she maintained her cheerfulness, he said. That was her nature.
Vickie and Billy first met in the summer of 1972 at Fairview Beach in King George. She was from Fredericksburg, and he from farming country in Sparta and recently back from Vietnam. "It was love at first sight," he said. "But she wouldn't give me her telephone number."
After meeting at the beach several more times and talking more, she finally gave him her number. Their romance soared and they were married that fall on October 7. "We didn't court that long," he said. "We kinda knew we were made for each other."
In recent years, Vickie was most often found behind the counter at her picturesque antique shop, The Country Angel. She could also be found decorating her shop window, one of the prettiest in Bowling Green. Her friends from church often visited.
Most times Billy was by her side at the shop, along with their daughter Ann Griffin and grandson A.J. Vickie delighted in looking after A.J., and gave her added reason to fight back against the cancer, said Rev. Covington.
Ann and her husband Charlie will take over the shop, said Billy, and he will help out.
"We're going to do our best to continue on," said Ann, a Frog Level volunteer firefighter who works for the Department of Emergency Services in Westmoreland. After the service on Saturday, Vickie Cecil was laid to rest at the Mt. Hermon Baptist Church cemetery in Shumansville. "She wanted to be with me and my people," said Billy.
"I'm going to be really lonesome for her. If ever there was a country angel, it was her."