Thank you for checking our website on Michele. Below are the remarks made at the Service of Remembrance for Michele by Anita Andrews on behalf of Michele's parents, Charles and Laura Andrews.... a very special thanks goes to Woodhaven Baptist Church in Rock Hill, S.C., Reverend Tom Patterson, Andrea Patterson, Dan Wilson, and her brother, Bruce Andrews.
pictured above: Michele's beloved "Sophie"
Thank you to all of you for attending our Service of Remembrance for our daughter, Shelli....Chuck and I, Bruce and his wife, Anita, Chris and his wife, Jennifer and Lynda and her fiance, Daniel, and all of our grandchildren are grateful to this wonderful church community here at Woodhaven for the support you are showing us tonight.... and very special thank yous are due to Dr. Tom, Dan Wilson, Andrea Patterson and Phillip Patterson for their kind and generous help in putting this service together.... We also want to send a very grateful thank you to Investigator Tom Smith, who is here tonight, and the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Department for their neverending efforts to find our daughter and bring her home....with sometimes very little to work with, they keep on looking for her and following every lead that comes their way....in addition, Tom has been kind and supportive and the best thing that's happened in this case....thank you, Tom.
This week has been a difficult and sad one because it has been five years since we last saw Shelli....As you may know, she disappeared from Spartanburg County on August 5th, 2002....Since then, we have had a few leads that did not lead to her being found....As time goes by, it becomes more difficult to discover new clues that will lead us to finding her, but with help from people like you, maybe this time, we will be given new information that will us our daughter back....We have started a new website that you can visit for more information....It is
www.michelewhitaker.com We will add new information as it becomes available. We would also ask that you remember Heather Sellars, also from Spartanburg, who went missing one month after Shelli...Heather worked with Shelli and there may be a connection between the two disappearances.....
Although at the time Shelli went missing she was in a troubled period of her life, we would like to tell you about the Shelli that we knew best and loved....when Shelli was about 4 years old, I remember walking into the nursery where her sister, Lynda, who was about 4 weeks old, was sleeping, and there was Shelli, next to the crib, holding her baby sister tenderly in her arms, cuddling her....of course, I panicked, because Shelli was only 4 at the time and I feared that she would drop her, but then realized that she was only trying to love her new baby sister....I quietly corrected Shelli and then taught her how to hold Lynda and to make sure Mommy or Daddy was there to help her....And she did just that....
I recently found a video of our family from Christmas 1984 which was just before we moved from Illinois to Gastonia, North Carolina....As usual, we were together as a family with my parents and my sister, Linda and her family....At the time, Bruce was away in Okinawa with the Navy and it was our first Christmas without him home....As I watched our Christmas celebration on the video, I notice something about Shelli that I had forgotten....she was a sweet, loving, and beautiful teenager that showed love and respect to her entire family....she was gentle with her sisiter, Lynda, loving and respectful to her Granma D. and thankful for whatever gifts she was given (and at that time, we couldn't afford much, but she didn't seem to care). She was the kind of teen that most parents would be proud to call "daughter".
As an adult, Shelli married very young and stumbled throught the next years struggling to pull her life together....Some of those times were good and some were not, but somehow we always managed to get through things together and always loved one another....
On June 6th this year (2007), Shelli's beloved grandfather passed away....A week before he died, I had the opportunity to sit with my father, alone, and talk with him....Daddy knew he was dying and I asked him if he would find Shelli for me....He made his left hand into a fist and said, "that's my baby" and that he would find her....I know that Daddy is in heaven and whether Shelli is on earth or in heaven, Daddy has her in his hand....and he will keep her, until she comes home to us.....
Shelli loved Chuck and I, her brothers, sister, nieces, nephews, Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and everyone who came into her life....All her troubles aside, she deserves to come home....Please remember her and keep her in your prayers....Chuck and I know that she is in God's hands and will continue to work to bring her home with God's help....but remember, God may be working through any of us to make that happen....
God bless you all