Jennie Ruth McCaghren Hatch

Jennie Ruth Eustace McCaghren Hatch, after eighty-nine years of a life well lived with folks well loved, died on Wednesday, May 4, 2011, leave a grieving though grateful prodigy: Mike and wife Anne Moore McCaghren, Patrick McCaghren, Molly and husband Ben Seward, Deborah and husband Bill Taber; daughter-in-law, Dedra McCaghren, the wife of deceased son, Timothy McCaghren, and Jeanie and husband Stephen Powell. Ruth was been blessed with 16 grandchildren, Melanie McCaghren Carlton, Michael Brian McCaghren, Marian McCaghren Underwood, Michele McCaghren Hamilton, Ben McCaghren, Amanda McCaghren Briscoe, Alicia McCaghren Cook, Sean Seward, Brian Seward (deceased), Molly Seward Depriest, Sarah Taber Englert, William Russell Taber III, Chastity McCaghren Keys, Brandt McCaghren, Aaron Powell, Gabriel Powell. She also left 26 great-grandchildren and 4 great-great-grandchildren, as well as countless friends and extended family who loved her and will miss her.

Ruth's love was an inexhaustible reservoir of strength freely shared. Friends will recall Ruth's unconditional affection and encouragement wherever they met. Beginning with her enduring love for her first love, husband, Ruben Ellard "Mac" McCaghren, to whom she was wed for 55 years, extending to her close and extended family, as well as her second husband, Bill Hatch.

Some examples of her loving and generous heart were cooking breakfast for hungry travelers who stopped by her home on a rural Tennessee highway, visiting otherwise forgotten prison inmates, serving patients as a Gray Lady, Ruth instinctively embraced this notion of love. As a trained hairstylist who enjoyed working in her own, as well as others' beauty shops, she also styled hair for the elderly at Hillcrest Nursing Home. She extended this servant heart towards her local community by being the founder of the Hillcrest Circle Neighborhood Watch program. As Christ promises, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father's kingdom", all who knew Ruth understand that she now shares God's sunshine.

Services for Ruth will be held Saturday, May 14th, at the North Chapel of George Smith and Sons, beginning with the celebration of her life with family and friends at 9 a.m., followed by the service at 11 a.m. Graveside services at Ridgecrest Cemetery will immediately follow.

The family wishes that memorials be directed to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital .

George A. Smith and Sons North Chapel, (731) 427-5555.