Services for Bessie Calcote Smith of Clinton are 10:30 a.m.Thursday, Nov. 4 at New Hope Methodist Church with burial in thechurch cemetery. Brookhaven Funeral Home is in charge ofarrangements.

Visitation is Thursday from 9:30-10:30 a.m. at the church.

Mrs. Smith, 88, died of heart failure Nov. 2, 2004, in RankinCounty. She was born in Lincoln County on March 15, 1916, toBartlette Calcote and Emma Durr Calcote.

She was valedictorian of her graduation class at the MississippiState School for the Blind in Jackson. Other than her family andbeing a homemaker, her first love was music. She learned to playthe songs she heard by ear on the piano and on the guitar. Sheenjoyed singing them until shortly before she died.

Preceding her in death were her parents; her husband, Edgar W.Smith; her four sisters, Etta Calcote Case, Viola Calcote Case,Minnie Calcote Smith and Mattie Calcote Woolley; and her sevenbrothers, Jimmy, Boyd, Willie, Louis, Bart, Fred Sr., and CadeCalcote.

Survivors are her daughter, Juanita Smith Walker and herhusband, Donald K. Walker, of Clinton; her son, Billy B. Smith ofBrookhaven; her granddaughter Christy Walker Eckert and herhusband, Heath Eckert, of Daphne, Ala.; her great-granddaughter,Emily Eckert; her sisters-in-law, Bernice Smith Calcote and MarreeNewell Calcote, both of Brookhaven; and many nieces, nephews andother loved ones.