Funeral Services for Mary Lee Carruth of Brookhaven are noon on Friday, July 25, 2014, at Harrigill Chapel with burial in Rosehill Cemetery. Harrigill Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Visitation is Friday, July 25, 2014, from 10:30 a.m. until time of service at Harrigill Funeral Home.

Mrs. Carruth, 93, died July 22, 2014.

Born in McComb and reared in nearby Auburn, Mary was the youngest of seven children of Gus Lee and Della Elizabeth Beacham Lee. While a freckle-faced teenager playing girl’s basketball at Johnston’s Station School, Mary Lee caught the eye of her best friend’s older brother, Samuel L. Carruth.

An extended courtship ensued against the backdrop of a looming war and soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she and Sam were married by a justice of the peace in Brookhaven on Dec. 19, 1941, the day before her 21st birthday, and just before he shipped out for Army Air Corps. Training in Sarasota, Florida.

After a brief stay with her new husband in Florida, she spent the rest of the war years as a young bride and mother, helping her sisters-in-law and her husband’s parents run their large dairy farm in Johnston’s Station, all the while anxiously awaiting her husband’s safe return from the airfields of Europe and North Africa.

After the war, the young family left the Carruth dairy business to make their lives in Brookhaven, where he found work as an auto mechanic, and she became an early indefatigable “super mom,” holding a variety of jobs outside the home over the ensuing 40 years.

Those jobs included popcorn sales at the 51 Drive-In Theater, customer service at Sears, receptionist at the Leader Advertiser, secretary at Ott Hartman Real Estate, bookkeeper for Dr. Louie Wilkins, bookkeeper for B&B Dairy and finally, when eye strain would no longer allow her to work on ledgers, she took a job at Brookhaven Bank as the switchboard operator and second floor receptionist, where she worked until retirement in 1985.

She could tell a story better than Will Rogers and her quick wit and expansive vocabulary could evoke a laugh from the stodgiest of listeners.

Always proud that her mother had attended college, Mrs. Carruth had wanted more than anything to become a lawyer at a time that that career choice was unusual for women in the South. Those dreams were dashed by World War II.

What she couldn’t have only served to fortify her determination for her children. It was that unfulfilled quest for knowledge and position that drove her to seek gainful employment throughout the formative lives of her children, so those earnings would go toward their higher education and their eventual college degrees.

Her culinary talents were noteworthy and her keen organizational skills meant that she and her family had delicious home-cooked meal every meal of the day.

During the growing season, she and Sam would come home from eight-hour days and tend to a large vegetable garden behind their home on Halbert Heights Road until the sun went down. What was not eaten in season was either canned or frozen by Mary.

Every weekend without fail she made cakes and or pies from scratch to satisfy her family’s sweet tooth for the coming week and her homemade ice cream on hot summer days was far better than anything at the Purity.

She also found time to sew clothing for her daughter and shop for bargains wherever she could find them, to stretch a dollar and save for her children’s future.

She loved antiques and enjoyed plundering through crammed and dusty stores in the region almost as much as she enjoyed haggling over the prices. She had a gift for engaging others in conversation and almost always found a way to insert her signature laugh, which often began as a high-pitched squeal and ended with an infectious ha ha hah.

From her years of growing up on a working farm, she was a deadeye with a long arm, having practiced striking kitchen matches on the fence posts from the front porch of the farmhouse in true Annie Oakley fashion. Her steady aim never left her, she stunned the entire family when, at age 61, she picked up a .22 caliber rifle at an outdoor shooting range and spun every target with precision, having not fired a gun in perhaps 45 or 50 years.

She could be tough, but she was kind. She had a soft spot for all animals, especially dogs, and dachshunds in particular, and growing flowers brought her particular satisfaction, always making certain her flowerbeds were alive with color – zinnias being her absolute favorite.

She was a member of the First Methodist Church of Brookhaven for the majority of the years she lived in Brookhaven. Widowed at age 78, she spent 10 years participating in numerous social clubs and church groups with newfound widowed friends, Bonnie Milbrandt chief among them.

When it became evident Mary could no longer live alone, her last five years were spent in assisted living in Brandon and, later, Lakeland Nursing Home in Jackson.

Preceding her in death were her husband and siblings.

Survivors are her children, Samuel L. Carruth Jr. “Cheryl” and Molly Mandel “David”; grandchildren, Kerri Lynn Carruth and Rusty Carruth “Nichole”; step granddaughter, Melissa Mandel “David Kelponis”; six great-grandchildren, Jacob, Ashley and Dillon Downing and Kylie, Kennedy and Greyton Carruth; brother-in-law, Larry Carruth “Patsy”; numerous nieces, nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews; and she would want this said, her granddog, Muffin.

The family wishes to extend a special thank you to the staff of Lakeland Nursing Home, who took loving care of Mrs. Carruth in her final years.

In lieu of flowers, her family requests donations in her memory be made to the Alzheimer’s Foundation or the American Diabetes Association.