Front Porch

Couple fills home with care

Wanda and Teep Mosrie built their Davis Islands house on love.

Well, they didn't build it exactly; they bought it back in 1977 for $40,000.

Even at that price, they could barely afford it.

Wanda took care of senior citizens. Teep worked as a lab technician at MacDill Air Force Base. The real estate agent didn't want to show them the house because it was painted Radio Flyer red.

Twice, they drove by it.

Twice, Wanda did a double take.

"I said, "It's just paint,"' recalls Wanda, now 60. "I knew right away this was the house for us."

And she was right. In this humble house - now painted a mellower, buttery beige - they found contentment.

They raised a family here. Neighbors have become friends. Bands of children still march to the door at Halloween, partly to see Teep dressed as Elvis and partly because of the house's good-candy reputation. (Wanda is known for sometimes dumping half-bags of Snickers into trick-or-treat sacks.) Sundays, you'll find the grandkids playing Wiffle Ball out front or chasing the Mosries' toy poodle, Presley.

The 2,400-square-foot interior offers ample space for collections of miniature china tea sets, doll-sized furniture, tiny radios, shoes, knives, coins, colored glass, hats, antique tins - even an entire room devoted to Elvis.

Picture rails built into a large den - where the 1950s carport once stood - display dozens of family photos.

Wanda and Teep affectionately call it their "rogues' gallery."

You can hear the happiness in their voices.

In fact, buying this house was almost prescient; they couldn't have imagined what lay ahead, Wanda says. She believes someone was watching over them.

On a Tuesday evening in August, Wanda and Teep sit in their den and remember. Their story winds back to 1986, the year life changed, the year their first granddaughter, Deanna, was born.

"I felt a connection to her even when she was still in the womb," Wanda recalls, "but I always felt like there was something wrong."

Within days of her birth, doctors did find something wrong. They called it microcephaly.

Deanna's body would grow, they said, but her brain would not. She would never speak, walk or eat unassisted. Her IQ would stall in infancy.

Over the next few months, the baby's mother separated from the Mosries' son. Slowly, together, the whole family made a decision. The Mosries would take care of Deanna.

After all, they had a house that was big enough.

"I said, "As long as I'm alive, she'll never be in a home,"' Wanda remembers.

Wanda and Teep honored that pledge.

They watched their granddaughter grow into a 17-year-old girl with long, dark hair and pale skin. She cannot walk or sit up and must be fed through a tube.

Until three years ago, when Wanda was diagnosed with colon cancer, the couple took care of Deanna themselves. Even with in-home nurses, they still bathe her, wash her hair and kiss her good night.

Wanda listens to Deanna's sleep with a baby monitor. She thanks God for the house because it has provided room for all of Deanna's needs, including her two hospital beds.

Deanna spends most of her waking hours in the den on a hospital bed with flowered sheets and a stuffed bear that says prayers out loud.

Her grandparents coo to her. Hold her hand. Kiss her forehead until she smiles. "God gives these children to people they know will take care of them," says Teep, who is 64.

When the doctors found Wanda's cancer, it had already spread into her lungs and liver.

The chemotherapy sends her to bed, exhausted and sick. In three years, she's only been off it a total of three months. Now, others come to the little house on Adalia Avenue and help the couple care for Deanna. Wanda knows the nurses by name, knows their circumstances, what life has called them to do.

She thinks of them as friends.

That's what home is all about, the Mosries say.

Loving people unconditionally.

Wanda strokes Deanna's forehead with such ferocious tenderness, a person can feel it just standing next to them. Sick as Wanda is, you can see the color of heaven in her blue eyes.

"She's what keeps me going," Wanda says of Deanna. "If something would happen to me, I know that no one can take care of her like I do."

In this house on Davis Islands. In the home that Wanda and Teep built.

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