Vera Ann Sowers McPeak, 87 of Owings, Maryland, passed away on April 14, 2026.
Vera was born a farm girl in Floyd County, Virginia. The 1940s and 1950s was a great time to grow up. She milked cows, picked up hay, learned to grow gardens, tended chickens and performed many other farm chores.
The chore that she truly did not like was washing dishes. She ran and hid when her mother called her to come in and do the dishes. Her mother’s name was Mary Dexter Tolbert Sowers.
She loved her daddy, Tellie T. Sowers. He was a colorful character. A timber cutter who felled trees all over the Blue Ridge Mountains, the steep mountains of West Virginia, and Southern Maryland.
Many times he was gone for weeks and lived in logging camps. Often he came home bearing gifts. She never knew what he would bring home next. Sure, there was the usual good stuff like oranges, tangerines, coconuts, chocolate drops, apples and walnuts at Christmas time each year. Other times his gifts were unusual. And those gifts could be very much alive at that. Nothing even close to puppies or kittens, though she would have liked one of those as well. It was more like rattlesnakes, possums, groundhogs, squirrels, owls or just anything that crossed his path while he tramped through the woods.
One such gift left a mark throughout her entire life. It was a pet fox. She was still upset about how things turned out with the fox even when she was in her seventies. She would rather have the fox than the chickens, she said. This story was written by her.
Titled: Sparky, the Red Fox
He was a pretty little red-coated fox with a bushy black tail. He was no bigger than a cat. He soon became used to us and we fed him well. His fur turned bright red and very soft, more so than a cat. We named him Sparky. Dad never said why he dug a fox pup out of its den and carried him home in a burlap sack thrown over his shoulder. When he was half grown, we put a collar on him and tied him to a chain nailed to a dog house where he slept.
Sparky didn’t bother the dogs or the cats, And the dogs didn’t bother him. That didn’t mean his wild instinct was gone.
He did like chicken. They were out the hen house at first light. Sparky slipped his collar during the night. The chickens weren’t missed so much, but seeing piles of feathers in various parts of the woods told how they got there.
Mother didn’t want to lose any more chickens. So Mother told Bob to take care of the fox. And he did with a bullet.
Dad said when he came home from cutting timber in Maryland, he was going to make Sparky a halter. He said Sparky could never run wild now. He wasn’t afraid of people and would cause trouble around the neighborhood.
Bob was her younger brother. They fought more like brothers than brother and sister. One time he was helping his uncle set rafters in a building. He fell through the boards and scraped his back. He ran home. No one was there except his sister. She poured alcohol on his skinned back and it set him on fire. As a kid, she may not have known the pain the alcohol would cause.
When Bob was little he couldn’t pronounce Vera. Her name sounded more like “Bat-Ah” when he said it. The nickname stuck for years.
She married Burell Edgar McPeak in 1955. Their years together totaled over 70. And their family grew to fill a house during that time. Three children of their own, three grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren arrived over the coming years. Over those 70 years that meant a lot of birthdays and holidays to celebrate. She made each and every event very special. Birthday cakes, gifts, and lots of food. The house was decorated all pretty. And she enjoyed hosting each and every event. Her granddaughter, Crystal, enjoyed the family dinners most of all, as a child and as an adult.
She came from a very large family herself. Her maternal grandparents were Dexter Franklin Tolbert and Edna Julina Moles. Her paternal grandparents were Eli Samuel Sowers and Virginia Lily Weddle. She had 19 uncles and aunts. And that meant numerous cousins. Sadly most of the cousins have passed away as well.
In 1963, they moved from Floyd County to Calvert County, Maryland. They lived there the rest of their lives.
For the next fifty years they owned and operated Mc Peak Lumber Company, in later years she helped out. She operated the fork lift, the edger, cut slab wood, and packed lumber until she was physically unable to do so. Calvert Independent, the county newspaper did a feature article about the sawmill and her picture was taken while she operated the edger.
She liked all kinds of animals. And had many close encounters with tame ones. There was a huge work horse on the farm with hooves the size of dinner plates. Her name was Nan. One time Vera was in the stall with Nan. The floor was mushy with several inches of muck. Nan shifted around and stepped on her foot. Down into the muck it goes. Stuck, she was stuck. The horse would not move off of her foot for nothing. She tried everything. She pounded the horse’s sides, her rump, pulled her tail, and screamed as loud as she could to get Nan’s attention. After a scary amount of time being trapped, Nan finally shifted her weight to the other side. That movement was just enough to allow a little girl to pull her foot free.
During her later years, she had many encounters with animals. From snakes to birds to insects. It was mostly the wildlife that ventured into her backyard. These eye-witness accounts she wrote down in little stories. Then on birthdays, she mailed a card and a story to her great-grandkids. One was about a pretty green snake that slithered over her feet one morning. Later, that same snake dropped out of the pear tree and looked her right in the face. Or the crow that swooped down and snatched a piece of cornbread she tossed out. It flew a short distance and buried the cornbread in the dirt to eat later. Then it flew away, thinking its stash was safe. Not so. Another crow watched this burial. It flew down and dug up the cornbread and ate it. She watched a wasp cover her hole in the ground with a dried leaf. She nursed a hawk with a broken wing back to health and freed him. One day she went to her truck and the hawk was perched on the top of the cab. She said he wanted his chicken leg. She fed him raw chicken legs while he was healing up. And she watched two feisty blue jays harass the very same hawk while he was still in the cage. Just to mention a very few of the fun stories she wrote about animal encounters. Animals are smarter than humans, she said.
The truck mentioned was a blue Ford Ranger. Of all the vehicles she drove, this little truck was her favorite. She loved that little truck.
A greenhouse was built for her later in life. She had a very green thumb. She grew a very big garden and canned all of what she harvested.
She liked games. Every Sunday, she and her daughter, Gale, played a good game of Scrabble. It was time she looked forward to. And she liked to play the card game of Rook. She was very good at making that “old crow” work for her.
One granddaughter spent a lot of time with her. She was the oldest and her name was Crystal. She was born in 1979. At the age of four, her grandma taught her to read. The book was all about Jo Boy and his dog Spot. Not many kids can read at four years old. That’s because her grandma loved to read herself. She got a biography of Martha Washington from elementary school and that started her lifelong love of reading. A side note, she and Bob walked three miles to get to school.
Crystal was a very smart girl. One Christmas when she was around three years old, her grandma wanted to take a picture of her in front of the decorated tree. Crystal got stubborn and refused. No coaxing from grandma helped. Defiant, Crystal got tired and decided to stick her finger up her nose. Well, Grandma snapped the picture anyway. Cute little curly-haired blonde with her finger buried deep in her nose. But Grandma was not going to let that behavior go unpunished. She sent away the picture and had a puzzle made of it. Grandma was smart too.
In 1998 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After surgery and chemo treatments, defeated the disease. But it left a toll on her health. Then in 2021 she had a hip replacement which helped her walk better. Six months later she had a debilitating stroke. It took away use of her right arm and hand, caused limited use of her right leg, and totally took away her ability to speak and be understood.
More tragedy followed. The house they lived in for 50 years burned to the ground. Nothing survived except an extensive collection of charred brown Hull dishes that she collected over many years. And Dad’s 1940 Ford Coup escaped the fire.
It took two years to build a new house. Dad wanted her to live long enough so she could enjoy their new house after so much hard work went into building it. And get out of a basement so they could eat together and she could sit on the back deck and watch the wildlife again. And maybe that would bring back more of her old self. The house is finished and waiting on county permits. It wasn’t meant to be.
She was a tough mountain woman, and much loved. Jesus was in her heart and he took her home to heaven. Her family takes comfort in that and will miss her so much.
She is survived by her husband, Burell Edgar McPeak; son, Burell Kenneth McPeak (Jennifer); daughters, Sandra M. Bradley and Vera Gale Jones (Larry); grandchildren, Crystal Cianna Bryant (Gordon), Kevin Shelton Bradley (Ashley), and Jessica Christine McPeak; great-grandchildren, Benjamin, Laura, Timothy, James, Joshua, Grace, John, Samuel, and Sadie Bryant, and Levi, Nathan, Felicity, and Annalise Bradley.
Graveside services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April
21, 2026 in the Jacksonville Cemetery with Gordon Bryant officiating.
