It’s a Friday in late October, and Vickie Prather has barely stopped all day.
At 69, she’s running errands; buying fabric from Hobby Lobby for a quilt she’s making for a niece; calling her husband’s doctors to book appointments; feeding her neighbors’ dog; looking after her youngest grandson, Bentley Waller, 6, for the afternoon and fixing dinner. In between, she found time to do something she’d been looking forward to: burning the brush and logs from her large backyard, as she does every fall.
“Rosie would love to get in on this; she’s a firebug like me,” she said of Rosie Wagler, 59, a good friend and neighbor of 20 years.
Vickie and Rosie met after Rosie’s husband, Steve, built an addition for Vickie’s house. Vickie and her husband, Terry Prather, 67, both help their Amish neighbors with rides into town for groceries or other errands.
“I don’t do long trips or haul animals,” Vickie said. “Apart from one time when Rosie begged me to drive so she could meet her first grandbaby.” That drive was four hours in each direction.
“I keep wondering if Vickie has to do everything,” Rosie mused as she gets a ride into Maysville with Vickie.
The two women were making that trip to buy food for their respective churches. “We have a lot of people in the community that aren’t as blessed as us,” Vickie said as she unloaded more than $200 worth of shelf-stable groceries for the “blessings box” at May’s Lick Christian Church. What started as a churchwide project has now fallen to Vickie.
The Prathers’ connection to the community isn’t limited to helping their neighbors. Beginning on Labour Day weekend each year, the couple start preparing the model trains he collects for the Christmas shows. “We’ve been doing them for over a decade now,” Vickie said. More than 100 people come through Terry’s workshop each year to see his train layout, a replica of Maysville.
Vickie was born in Lewis County and went to school there until the 8th grade, when her family moved to Mason County in the 1970s. She married Terry in 1980. Three years later, the couple moved into their Mays Lick house. Their two adult children, Josh Prather, 43, and Deana Waller, 35, and three grandchildren, Allen Prather, 21, Owen Prather, 14, and Bentley, live nearby.
When Vickie isn’t out helping others, she is supporting her family. Every Thursday and Friday, she cares for Bentley after school and then prepares dinner for the entire family. This was temporarily paused when Terry was admitted to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Fort Thomas for a week. Vickie slept in a hospital chair next to his bed for the first three nights. “I still have the knot in my back,” she said.
