An imperfect person who was a hero nonetheless

NEWPORT, Tenn. — The tiny Cocke County community of Point Pleasant had been soaked by showers that morning then made humid by the June 4 sun when the burial service began.

Most of the mourners wore blue jeans, some with tank tops and ball caps. One woman kicked off her flipflops and stood on top of the mound beside the open grave to get a photo of the grieving family.

A mule-drawn wagon bore the body to its final resting place.

Pastor James Hance said the gathering of nearly 200 was the largest he’d seen for a burial, and he’d been ministering to Point Pleasant Road Baptist Church for 15 years.

That was no surprise, though. Anna Last always had a way of attracting people.

She’d done it in life, and now she’d done it in death — in her foolhardy, heroic death.

“She wasn’t the best momma,” her eldest son Dillion, 13, told hundreds of mourners at the funeral the night before, “and she wasn’t the worst momma. But she was my momma.”

Anna’s momma was Mary “Ms. Teetsie” Redman, who had brought Anna home from the hospital as a baby 29 years earlier. She had raised the girl as a daughter, even though Ms. Teetsie really was Anna’s maternal grandmother.

Anna was a hell-raiser from early on, always known as a smart aleck. Two years after Dillion was born and his father was out of the picture, a second son, Dakota,