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Wilma Powers with her newborn Alafair Winter Smith.

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First baby of 2008

CAITLIN SULLIVAN/Staff

A purple bow lay crooked on Alafair Winter Smith’s tiny, bald head.
She doesn’t know it yet but she is the first Southwest Virginia baby born in 2008.
At 9:24 a.m. on January 1 Wilma Powers, 21, gave birth to the five pound, 10 ounce and 19 inch long Alafair at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon.
It’s Powers’ first child and she’s excited. Excited to watch her take her first step, give her first smile and teach her to cook.
“I also need to make sure I do everything right,” Powers said. “That she’s happy and full.”
Powers said that “Alafair” was her great great aunts name and although she never met her she likes the stories she’s heard.
“She was a little tiny woman who lived up on a ridge and did pretty much everything herself,” Powers said.
Powers mother, Joyce Powers, she remembers hearing stories of Alafair packing bags of feed up on her shoulders.
“She sounded like a spunky lady,” Joyce Powers said.
Powers and her mother live five miles apart in Pound, Va. and both work at a health food store in downtown Wise.
Joyce Powers only had one child, Powers, and she’s excited about her new granddaughter.
“It’s kind of like I get to have her all over again,” she said.