A former telephone operator dialed up a lot of love in her will for a Tennessee county’s animal shelter.
Glenda Taylor DeLawder's $1.2 million bequest to an animal shelter was announced Christmas Day on the Carter County government website by Mayor Leon Humphrey, the Johnson City Press reported. DeLawder, who died Nov. 13, 2015, in Elizabethton, worked as a telephone operator for AT&T in Washington, D.C. She was 72, and her obituary noted that she was an avid animal lover.
Humphrey wrote on the county website that $540,000 will be given to the Elizabethton Carter County Animal Shelter to expand the dog and cat holding areas. It also will be used to pay for a new van that can be converted to transport dogs and cats to be spayed and neutered.
Construction will begin on the shelter expansion Jan. 9, and Humphrey said the van is scheduled to arrive by March 1.
“Carter County and the shelter are truly blessed and honored to be given such a tremendous gift, one of the largest private gifts ever given to the county for our citizens (human, feline and canine),” Humphrey wrote on the county website.
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