Anne Laura (Bloss) Costen (1913 - 2003)

Born 8 Aug 1913 in Clayton Co, GA

Ancestors

Wife of Walter Lee Costen — married 5 Jun 1939 in Alabama City, Etowah, Alabama, United States

Died 2003 at about age 89 in Montgomery, Alabama, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Marianne Muse [send private message]

Biography

Anne Laura was born in 1913. She was the daughter of Walter Ray Bloss and Bertha Helen Lambert. She passed away in 2003.

Sources

• In 1920 census, Muscle Shoals, AL, Walter Ray Bloss and wife Bertha H (Lambert) Bloss with Anna Laura Bloss, daughter--are living in the community that built the first stages of the giant electro-hydraulic dam, the Wilson Dam, that started under construction after the WWI. Near the old town of Florence, AL, the Bloss family are a part of this--a development as large as a small town, which is almost entirely built by the people gathering to build the hydro-electric plant and dam. At the time, the project was designed to provide the nitrites for refurbishing ammunition for the USA, as well as to provide electric utilities services in the South which had, up 'til now, been severely held back economically by lack of modern utilities. This project, later suspended for a period and bogged down in the Coolidge administration, was finished under Franklin D Roosevelt.

Walter R Bloss, Anne's father, is an electrician employed in the Muscle Shoals project in a time when Muscle Shoals, near Florence, AL., was the center of the effort which would later be completed under auspices of the TVA.

Anna Laura Bloss is six years old in 1920.

I, as researcher, added this profile for Anne Bloss Costen. When I was a high-school student, in c.1958 in Montgomery AL, Anne Costen was one of the very finest teachers at what was then called Robert E Lee High School. (The name of this school has recently, c 2022, been shortened or changed.) She, a graduate of University of Alabama and a life-time reader, presided over classes in English literature and composition for students of approximately 17-18 years old, Juniors or Seniors, as I recall. I was in her class in c 1959. Her intelligence in teaching focussed my attention every day that I was in her presence. I credit her influence, along with the influence of several of my other teachers in high-school, with helping me to learn how to read and how to think about literature.

The influence of her good sense of humor and her natural ability, through her intelligence, to command the attention of her students--these were also qualities that gave me confidence as a woman later, as I remembered her strengths.