Rebecca Noe Peavy passed from this life on January 6, 2024 at 93 years old after an 18-year battle with Parkinsons Disease. Praise God, she is now whole again. She was born on October 30, 1930 to the late Felix Noe and Vista Maxey Noe, in Columbia, Mississippi. She graduated from the beautiful Columbia High School in 1948, and then Mississippi State College for Women (now MUW) in 1952 with a degree in music. She played the piano and the violin. She planned to teach music, but also made sure to qualify for an elementary school teaching position. After college she and two friends went to Washington D.C. for the summer and worked in the Pentagon in the typing pool. They lived together in a boarding house for young women, and had a wonderful time seeing all the sights in D.C. That fall she returned to Mississippi and took a position teaching in Gunnison in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Her first fourth-grade class had 44 students. In 1953 she married John C. Peavy, of Monticello, MS and traveled extensively with him in the U. S. Air Force. After deployments in Illinois, Florida, South Carolina, and England, they came to Tampa in 1962. She worked for Hillsborough County Schools for 32 years, teaching at Ballast Point Elementary, Chiaramonte Elementary, and Gorrie Elementary. She received a Master’s degree in Education from University of Tampa and specialized in working with neurodivergent children with learning differences. Many students and fellow faculty members remember her fondly. She was most proud of her work with students, many of whom returned to share their college and life successes with her. She was a volunteer seamstress for the Tampa Ballet Company, and chaperoned trips to Birmingham, AL, Richmond, VA, Atlanta, GA, and Miami, FL with the ballet dancers. She was an avid quilter, and served a term as President of the Tampa Bay Quilt Club. She was also a member of Kappa Delta Pi, the National Honor Society of Teaching Excellence, and a member of Hyde Park United Methodist.

In 2004 she and her husband moved back to Mississippi and settled in retirement in Brookhaven, where she joined the First United Methodist Church. She completed three years of Disciple Bible Study. Her husband of 67 years passed away in 2020. Also preceding her in death were her parents, her sister-in-law Jeannette Ferguson Noe, and brothers-in-law: Leroy Peavy, Nelson Merritt, and sister-in-law Donice Peavy Carter, and nephew Michael Peavy. She is survived by her daughter, Evelyn Peavy, of Brookhaven and Tampa, her brother Harold Noe of Meridian, MS, and nephew David Noe of Tampa, FL, her sisters-in-law: Marie Peavy Leibold (Bill) of Ft. Walton Beach, Ruth Peavy Merritt (the late Nelson Merritt) of Columbia, MS and Destin, and Beth Peavy Banes (Stan) of Dallas, TX, and nephews: Collin Peavy of Houston, TX, Erik Leibold and Kevin Leibold of Ft. Walton Beach, Rob Banes, Scott Banes, Matt Banes, and Micah Banes of Dallas, TX.

The family would like to recognize and thank her caregivers, Joyce Rice, Carolina Richardson, Sarah Kimberly Brown, and Latasha Martin, without whose dedication and love, we would have fallen apart.

Services will be held on Thursday, January 11, at 1:00 pm at Brookhaven Funeral Home; an hour of visitation will begin at 12 o’clock noon and continue until time of the service. Burial will follow at Woodlawn Cemetery in Columbia, MS.