WALSENBURG - The story is best told by Ann Mantini's hands, crippled by arthritis at 81 but still braiding palm fronds for Palm Sunday as a testament to her faith.

Her small twisted fingers stripped the coarse outer edges, leaving a supple frond to split into strands that she can weave, loop, thread and tighten, creating what she called "a designed palm."

Beginning at the bottom of the frond, which serves as a handle, her fingers defied their age, weaving, looping, threading and tightening to create folk art in the form of a rosette, a beehive or an ear of wheat.

For all the Palm Sundays she can remember since her childhood in a New Jersey orphanage, where the nuns taught her how to ornament the palm fronds, she has carried on the tradition as a link to her Italian heritage.

"This is not in a book. You won't find this in a book," Mantini said as her fingers moved back and forth like a shuttle. "This is a tradition."

Mantini believes in the Roman Catholic Church and the Democratic Party. She also has faith in herself and the unity of family.

She believes in using things until they wear out and then reviving them for a second use. She believes in prettying things up: every ordinary tissue box looks prettier with a lace cover and a few tiny crocheted blossoms.

"You work with what you have. You use everything," Mantini said, talking specifically about the palm fronds that arrive each spring from a Denver church supply company but also declaring a principle of her life.

Continuing to mix philosophies of art and life, "Not everything is perfect," she said. "You have to make do with what you have. That's what I've learned being poor."

Orphaned young

She is tiny - barely 5 feet tall - decisive, tough and loving. She also is beloved of generations of schoolchildren in her southern Colorado town as "Grandma Ann" because she still works as an aide.

Born Antoinette Mantini, she was the second child and first daughter of Anna Mantini, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants, and James Mantini, who had immigrated from Italy himself.

All seven of their children were named for relatives in the old country.

The seventh child, Rocco, died when he was just over a year old, followed by Anna Mantini at age 29 in fall 1938 and James Mantini at age 42 the next spring.

"If you didn't have a mother or a father then, you were taken care of by the state," Mantini said, describing how she and her three sisters were sent to St. Anthony's Orphanage in Arlington, N.J.

The family was split up when her two brothers were assigned to an orphanage for boys.

When she was only 8 years old her father, at his death, told her to watch over the family, a surrogate mother.

The Mother Cabrini nuns taught discipline, academics and a few niceties.

"They taught us how to set a table," Mantini said.

The nuns, with Swiss-Italian heritage themselves, also exposed her to arts and crafts through such European traditions as ornamenting palm fronds each spring.

"The nuns just did it, and we watched them and learned by watching them," Mantini said. "It was a reward for good behavior.

"It was an honor. We loved doing it.

"It was a girl thing."

'Brought up that way'

Later in life, after she had come to Colorado in 1946, married and raised her own four children, she continued the Palm Sunday tradition. After her husband's death, she took back her maiden name.

She is simply Ann, one syllable, as straightforward and unpretentious as her personality, and Mantini, her link to her Italian roots.

As constant as her self-identity has been her Roman Catholic faith and her attendance at St. Mary's Church in Walsenburg.

"We were brought up that way, and I never wanted to lose the way I was brought up," she said.

Come Palm Sunday, she will offer five decorated palms for the altar.

"I make five each year because that's all I have time to make," she said.

Come Easter, she will use the natural palms from this season and palms decorated in years past to form a cross that she saves from year to year.

She will decorate the cross with flowers and lights to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

She said people may not know her name, but they know her as the Palm Lady.

"The people seem to appreciate what I do," Mantini said. "They go up to the altar to see my palms. They appreciate my work."

Start your own tradition

To weave a palm frond in the wheat pattern, the simplest design:

• Strip off the coarse sides of a single frond and trim with scissors, leaving the pliable palm.

• Cut off the silky tip.

• Split the frond from top to bottom into two strands to weave together. "Two pieces is all you need," Ann Mantini said. "This is the easiest design to make."

• Holding one strand in each hand, double over each strand to form a loop.

•"Loop and push the loop through the other loop," she said. "That's all you do. You're looping."

• Continue looping one side through the other to the end of the strands.

• "At the end, instead of looping it through, put the weak piece into the loop and then push it down to hold it," Mantini said. "There it is. It won't come out."

garnerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5421

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