Schlaht, Anita: - Anita Edwards Wadley Schlaht was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1953. She and her family moved from Neosho, Missouri to Edmond, Oklahoma in 1960. At the age of seven Anita began her walk with Jesus and found that while she spent quiet times among the trees at GA Camp, He was speaking through His Word about the direction for her life. One of her life verses is Galations 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth within me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Anita remembers visiting her maternal grandmother in Kingfisher, Oklahoma and spending time in the garden with her. Blanche loved flowers and grew all kinds of vegetables in the summertime. During vacations Anita remembers picking pears and wrapping them in newspaper to store in the cellar, picking up pecans from her trees, learning to can tomatoes and beans, and picking flowers for a table bouquet. Anita's grandmother was a godly woman who studied her Bible and knelt beside the bed to pray each night before she crawled in beside her. Graduating from high school in 1971, college in 1974 and receiving her M.Ed. in Gifted Education in 1992, Anita owned and ran her own preschool for 25 years and taught kindergarten in the Edmond Public Schools for four years. She remembers a poem from those years that ends, "I love to work in the garden where little children grow." Anita wrote the internationally known poem "Just Playing" in 1974. It was published in calendars, booklets, posters, curriculum guides, Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul, and as a children's book in 2018. She published three short stories in the Guideposts "When Miracles Happen" series in 2007 and 2008.Anita retired in 2019 after five years as Executive Director of the Edmond Historical Society and Museum. She is passionate about studying God's Word and has been drawn to the missions' ministries at Henderson Hills Baptist Church in Edmond where she uses her gifts of teaching, writing, music, sewing and crochet. Anita and her husband Kirby have a blended family of six children and nine grandchildren. They enjoy their membership together in the Edmond Iris and Garden Society, travelling and visiting botanical gardens wherever they go, reading, sports, and music.