In Her Own Words: The Life and Inspirational Poems of Velma Dora Terry (1915-1999). A child of the windy wheat plains of central Kansas, Velma Dora Terry nee Cochren, lived a simple life of no great renown, yet she possessed a mother's heart, a poet's vision, and a prophet's faith. Velma lived in simple homes in Kansas, rude houses in the Ozarks, and small homes on the frosty Nebraska hills. She gave birth to ten children over thirty years and lost three as infants. She fell, she stumbled, but every time reached out to the God of her faith and tried to point others in that saving way. Velma's work originally appeared in several small collections that sold throughout southwestern Missouri and some poems also were printed in newspapers in the region. Now, for the first time, a majority of her work is being presented in its chronological order, along with a biographical and faith sketch of this woman who, in her poems, continues to speak today.