Thanks for sharing the family picatures, and Steve, the eulogy was really nice and so well written. I'm sure she would be very proud.  Love you all Wildsmiths and am praying for comfort in this time of loss.  Morgan and Dee West

Here is my grandmother's eulogy, for those who weren't able to attend:

I have many memories of my grandmother over the course of my life, but one stands out in sharp contrast over all the rest: Watching through the back windows of my parents' car as we drove down South Lake Street, one block over from her home on Tidwell Drive, on our way back to Tennessee.

Without fail, she would walk through the breezeway and stand in her backyard, waving goodbye as we rounded the bend and disappeared from view. Almost immediately my brother and I would start in on one another, picking and poking as we still do today, testing the resolve and patience of our parents on the long drive home.

But when it came to Mary Beth Tidwell, out of sight was certainly not out of mind.

Returning here to honor her one final time has reminded me of just how much of an impact she had on my life. Every step, every glance, every breath in this town she called home evokes a thousand images of love and laughter, of joy and admiration and mischievous merriment, each of them burned into the very fiber of my being. I would not be the man I am today without the love and influence of my grandmother.

Of course, all great lives are marked in equal measure by tragedy and pain, and Beth Tidwell knew those things well. She was the daughter of Manuel and Viola Street Carmichael, Mississippi sharecroppers who wrestled their livelihood from the ground. Two brothers, John and Paul Stanley, died in infancy; a sister, Mildred, died in 1938 at the age of 24. Two other brothers served in World War II, as did her husband, Bobby Tidwell.

When my grandfather died in 1970, the year before I was born, her heart cracked; when her son, Robert James Tidwell, died three years later, it shattered. In the years between, she served out her late husband's term as District 1 Supervisor of Prentiss County, becoming the first female supervisor in county history – a point of pride for her throughout her life, as was the one mile of blacktop she laid down during her term – a half mile down the old Marietta Road, and a half-mile down Southeast Lake Street.

Such accomplishments did little to assuage her grief, however. To that end, she turned to the two things that sustained her throughout her life: God, and family.

In preparing for the eventuality of her own death, the two go hand in hand. She writes of her two wonderful daughters, Nancy Dobbins and my mother, Charlotte Wildsmith; of them and her three grandchildren, she writes, “You see what the Lord has done for me, but I loved Him very much. I always went to him for my tough times. I wonder why the Lord is so good to me to live such a long life. I'm sure it's for a purpose.”

I look out today, and I see that purpose gathered here. The lives she touched as a member of the Farm Bureau, as one-time president of the American Legion Auxiliary, even as a young girl who played basketball during high school at schools in Ripley, Dumas and Walnut, are innumerable; the full measure of her impact on my life, and those of my brother Mike and my cousin Robert Scott, is incalculable.

I'm sorry to say that far too often, I took her love for granted. Without fail, she remembered birthdays and Christmas for her grandchildren via cards filled with money, a sacrifice given her limited income. I have no idea what she gave up to make sure she had the money to send to the three of us, and standing here today, I can only pray that she knew that we were grateful. We may not have called as often as we should have, or visited as often as we would have liked, but every time a letter arrived in the mail with her nearly illegible handwriting scrawled across the envelope, we would smile. What it contained wasn't nearly as important as what it symbolized, which was the fierce and indomitable love of a woman who once stared into the black pit of depression and grief and turned away from it. She chose instead to live in the light, to cling to her surviving babies and her grandbabies, and to the faith she first professed as a girl at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Tippah County.

And live she did. To us, she was simply Mammaw. As children, she delighted us by pushing out her dentures with her tongue; as boys, she did so with stories of climbing the town water tower on a dare while in high school. She regaled us with tales of a grandfather we never knew, a man who lives in our minds as a good provider, a decorated soldier and a public servant who was the love of her life. She taught us how to catch a fish, that blackgum branches can be used to clean your teeth and that snakes are no match for an old woman wielding a hoe. Her home was a magical place of coins and candy; her property was the Neverland where we ran wild and free; her old Dodge Dart was our ticket to fast food hamburgers and comic books.

She was larger than life then, and she remains so in the stories we tell. It seems everyone has an eccentric grandmother, but ours was a woman of legend. She was no stranger to hard work. After graduating high school from Dumas in 1939, she went to work the next year at the Mid-South Manufacturing Plant, a garment factory where she helped make uniform shirts for soldiers in World War II. The work ethic instilled in her as a child carried with her all of her days, and she maintained a well-manicured lawn that included a prize yucca plant that stood for more than three decades. As a child, her garden seemed to rival the pictures of Midwestern farms I saw in the encyclopedia. If you could grow it and eat it, she tried, and often succeeded. Today, when I take the time to plunge my fingers in the crumbling soil of my own modest vegetable patch, I smile and think of her, stooped over in the rows wearing that wide-brimmed bonnet, sweating and humming and calling for us to come see the bounty she gathered into a basket.

At times, her spirit was as wild and cantankerous as the land she farmed. She loved a good practical joke, and she loved to laugh. One of my favorite stories involves a neighbor who was terrified of snakes. Beneath her strawberry plants one summer, my grandmother discovered a recently shed snake skin, long and dark, and she crept across the street in the middle of the night to wrap it around her neighbor's mailbox. I believe she waited all the next day at the window, peaking out the blinds and waiting for the time when her unsuspecting neighbor came to check her mail. She screamed, Mammaw laughed and the mailman had to bring her neighbor's mail to the front door for the next six months.

She was a simple woman in many ways, but complicated in so many others. She didn't understand concepts like physics or the economy or world affairs, but she lived a life rich in knowledge and understanding beyond the scope of college degrees. Her house was a museum of photo albums and family heirlooms, and her mind was a treasure trove of stories about men and women I never met, but whose blood runs in my veins as strong as it did in hers. She showed me that we are all a part of those who came before us, and I feel that every time I return to gently rolling hills of Northeast Mississippi. 

And her love … her love was as endless as Highway 72 seemed to be at the start of every journey back to her house and her loving arms. I loved nothing more as a child than to lay my head on her chest, to hear the hammering of her heart and to hear her tell me how much she loved me. 

Standing here today, I realize that my grief is selfish. I want just one more hug and one more smile, one more home-cooked meal and one more game of Uno. I want to hear one more story, to ask one more question about our ancestors, to receive one more jar of her delicious apple jelly. I want to pull out of this town and see her standing in the breezeway one more time, waving a goodbye that isn't really a goodbye, because the next trip to Booneville will begin with pulling into her gravel drive and hearing the old familiar sound of the screen door sliding open, followed by her jubilant greeting and smiling face.

We will see her again. Of that, I have no doubt. And while she looks down upon us with that tender smile and brushes away the tears we shed with hands made strong and full again, I know she is at peace. She stands beside her brothers and sister and her parents. She hugs her son. She leans into the arms of her beloved Bobby. And she's waving to us from a breezeway in heaven, bidding us farewell until we all arrive on the other side to be with her again.

Nancy, you and your family are in my prayers.

Our thoughts and prayers are with your whole family.  God bless you all.
Dan and Susie Dugger

OBITUARY

Mary Beth Tidwell

6 August, 1917 – 28 July, 2012

McMillan Funeral Home

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