WINTER HAVEN - Sarah Anna Lerner was born on July 18, 1919 in Kansas City Missouri, the second child of Sadie Fuff and Issie Lerner, who had immigrated from Warsaw, Poland earlier in the century.

Sarah had her father's blue eyes and a full head of curly black hair - hair she claimed was so unruly that her mother had to wash it in the basement lest the neighbors come running upon hearing her screams.

Knowing they had a smart child on their hands and a depression to contend with, Sarah's parents skipped her through four grades in school and she graduated from Northeast High School in 1933, a month shy of her fourteenth birthday.

After bringing her paycheck home to her mother for nearly ten years, Sarah met and married Joseph Hightower, a man nearly twenty years her senior in order to get away from her parents' home and, eventually, Kansas City.

They had their first son Robert "Butch" Manning in Kansas City in 1943 and left soon after. Their second child, Edith, was born in Seattle about 19 months later; according to Sarah, when they brought his "Sissie" home from the hospital, Butch ordered them to "take her back."

Despite Butch's demands, they decided to keep their new daughter, and the four moved to Los Angeles where Sarah found the climate so much more agreeable than Missouri or Washington that she refused to leave. Her parents, her older sister Rose, and two younger brothers, Eddie and Tommy, soon followed. Sarah and Joe's last two children were born in Artesia, California: "Bebe" Anne in 1946 and Stanley and in 1947.

Shortly after Stanley's arrival, Joe gambled away one too many of their belongings; Sarah left him and returned to her parents. A 3 bedroom, 1 bath, postwar tract house was not quite big enough for Sarah, her four kids, her parents and her brother Ed. Sadie had a difficult time managing all four of the children while Sarah worked, so they sent Bebe and Stanley to live with her brother Tommy and his new wife, Auggie.

Back under her parents' roof and her mother's thumb, with her children in different houses, was not exactly where Sarah wanted to be, so she married a second time. While the marriage got her out of her parents’ house and her children back under one roof, her second husband was no better than the first and another divorce soon followed.

This time, the children were a bit older, and like she had when she was a teenager, they were able to work and help out. She vowed never to live with her parents again and she never did. Sarah worked as a bookkeeper for over thirty years. In that time, she managed to raise her four children, buy her own home, and always save at least $10 a week, no matter what.

She did all of this while relying on Public Transportation and/or her children to drive her around. But, once all her children moved out, she learned how to drive, and in the 1970's, she bought herself a brand new Dodge Dart Swinger. She used that car to drive herself to work and back and once a week she took it to the beauty shop to have that full head of thick - now dyed - black hair set.

By the time she bought that car, her two daughters had given her four granddaughters - Rita, Gina, "Missy" and Charity. In the 1980’s, Butch had two sons, Robby & Ryan and in 1990, her last grandson, Gregory, was born to her youngest son, Stanley.

By the time Gregory came along, Sarah was twice a great-grandmother. Gina’s son Brad was born in 1987 and Rita's son Robert followed him in 1988. In the midst of becoming a Great-Grandmother, Sarah sold the Dodge Dart, bought a new pink Plymouth Reliant and retired from her job at Pacific Upholstery Supply.

Sarah’s job at Pacific had provided enough material to dress her granddaughters like sofas for more than a decade. But it was time to move on, and move she did; after refusing to leave the Golden State forty years prior, she finally consented to move and she headed back East to live in Virginia with her oldest daughter, "Sis."

As if she were back in her younger years, Sarah stayed on the move. From Virginia she and "Sissie" moved to Payson, Arizona where her third great-grandchild - and first great grand-daughter - Paige, was born in 1993. In 2002, Sarah moved to Las Vegas to live with her oldest Granddaughter, Rita. From there, they moved back to Virginia where Sarah saw the arrival of her youngest great-grandson, Zain and finally, they moved to Florida in 2004.

Never one to lose her sense of sarcasm, Sarah swore that Florida made her sick. But the warm weather, like that in California, was a welcome respite to her after two cold winters in Virginia. Sarah never had a lot of friends, her family occupied all of her time and all of her heart. And whether they called her Sarah, Mom, Grandma Hightower, or Gwammy Sarah, she will always occupy theirs.

Sarah Anne Hightower is survived by one brother, four children, seven grand children and six great grandchildren.