Sharon was born on May 5, 1944 in Wharton, Texas, to an educator and a stay-at-home mother. She excelled academically, graduating as valedictorian of her class at Sweeny High School, and was intensely curious and driven to learn. She met her future husband, Darrell, at a church function when she was fifteen, and they would marry five years later.
She was met with a number of serious tragedies and challenges in her life, but none ever deterred her for long. When she was a teenager, she was seriously injured in a car accident, but quickly resumed her studies after several reconstructive surgeries. She attended college at the University of Houston before moving to west Texas with her husband for his career. She later completed her bachelor’s degree, earning a B.S. in Physical Therapy from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1972, and worked as a physical therapist for eighteen years, rising to the position of Director of Physical Therapy at Brazosport Memorial Hospital before pursuing her lifelong dream to become a doctor.
She would not have called herself a feminist, but she was many years ahead of her time. Her husband supported her decision to return to school unconditionally. She overcame preconceptions about women and older “non-traditional” students to earn her M.D. from The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio in 1994 where she was president of her class for two years, and completed her residency in Psychiatry through Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1998. She then embarked on a career of helping veterans and active duty military personnel through positions with VA hospitals in Houston, Lufkin, Tyler, and finally at Fort Hood in Killeen before transitioning to an outpatient practice at Chupik Consulting in Temple. She loved serving our men and women in uniform and passionately believed in America as the land of freedom and opportunity. Her patients knew her as a petite woman with apparently limitless energy and the ability to counsel them with fearless honesty, but never with any judgment.
She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2012 and continued to work as a physician while undergoing continuous treatment and chemotherapy. Although she suffered frequently from her illness and the side effects of treatment, it caused her to refocus on her faith in God and to draw closer to Him in her final years, and her medical practice remained a source of fulfillment and meaning for her until a few weeks before her death.
In addition to her unrelenting drive to excel and piercing intelligence, she had a sense of adventure. At various points in her life, she ran a florist shop out of her home, bought a cow at auction on a whim –and then asked her father-in-law to take care of it for her, bought an Arabian horse and learned to ride English saddle, travelled with her family to Canada, Hawaii, and many points in the U.S., bought a small farm, sold a small farm, and read thousands of novels. She enjoyed fishing with her family at Port Aransas. She was a great cook and a loving and attentive mother who baked elaborate birthday cakes for her children, including one memorable sheet cake with G.I. Joe figurines charging across a field of chocolate icing towards enemy soldiers encamped behind tootsie rolls.
She is survived by her faithful husband of 56 years, Morgan Darrell Necessary, son Ryan and his wife Melania (Clear Lake, Texas) and their children Henry and Ellanora, daughter Kristin and her husband Daniel Brookhart (Houston, Texas), brother Charles Bledsoe and his wife Carol (Montalba, Texas), and cousins Charles Lee Bledsoe and wife Sandy (Montalba, Texas), and Stephanie and Chris Bachle (Houston, Texas).
She is preceded in death by her parents, A. T. and Lela Bledsoe and brother Eugene.
Visitation will be held at Crawford-Bowers Funeral Home, Temple from 2:00-4:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 28. A private graveside service will be held at a later date.
In lieu of the customary remembrances, donations in her memory may be made to Montalba Baptist Church, Palestine, Texas.
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