In Loving Memory Iona Evelyn Abbott
Born August 5, 1921 in Earle, Arkansas
Died March 15, 2015 in Marion, Arkansas
Officiating Reverend David Dobbs
Services Graveside at Gibson Bayou Cemetery in
Earle, Arkansas, on
March 19, 2015 at
10:00 AM
Interment Gibson Bayou Cemetery in Earle, Arkansas
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Psalm 23
The Lord is my sheperd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
For Thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies
Thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
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I have fond memories of my grandmother. She used to work at a casket factory in Memphis, Tennessee. In the late 1970s she cashiered at the Nic-Nac convenience store (no longer exists) at the corner of Broadway and Stuart Avenue, across from Pig-In Poke in West Memphis, Arkansas. We lived nearby in apartments on Thompson Avenue. My dad had a leather shop near Nic-Nac called The Tan Spot, and I remember many days walking from there down Broadway to the Red Barn restaurant, which was really a red barn. She used to live near us in the apartment complex on Thompson Avenue; I think she lived on Stuart Ave. This was in the 1970s when kids were expected and allowed to roam outside during the day without supervision.
She and her mom Thelma, my great-grandmother, lived with my uncle Harry on McAuley Drive for several years in the 1980s. Eventually my great-grandmother’s health got poor and she went into a nursing home on South Avalon St at West Jackson Avenue.
In 1990 Iona went to stay with her son, my father, in Georgia when my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and placed in hospice care. My mother would stay at our house on Hardeman Avenue in Fort Valley, Georgia until she died in December, 1990, mere weeks after her 42nd birthday.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Iona lived at Pine Ridge Apartments for senior living on West Jackson Avenue, not far from my great-grandmother’s nursing home, both in West Memphis.
The last few years she lived in a nursing home in Marion, Arkansas, at the corner of Military Road and Brougham Avenue until her death in 2015. The nursing home has since been torn down and is now part of Greenway Equipment.