Mark Osborne

Mark Osborne Sr., 71, of Jackson, Mississippi, died in the arms of his wife on Thanksgiving night, Nov. 28, 2024, at his home in Fondren. He took his last breath while the couple’s song, “True Companion,” played softly in the background.

A celebration of life service will be held at 4 p.m. Dec. 6 at Lakewood Funeral Home and Memorial Park, 6011 Clinton Blvd., Jackson, with the Rev. Todd Allen officiating. Visitation will start at 3 p.m.

Mark didn’t march to the beat of a different drummer. Marching wasn’t his thing.

Instead, as a child, he would play, dodge and backflip to it.

As a man, he would ponder and saunter to it.

And when diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that would take his life within weeks, he would – with humor, grace and faith – embrace it.

Mark wanted to spend his final days with Tammy Ramsdell, his “third-time-is-a charm” wife, in their quaint 1936 home, filled with his many paintings, flea market finds, thrift store bargains and three dogs. Surrounded by hundreds of varieties of bushes and trees he planted over the years, he fondly nicknamed his yard “the Garden of Eden.” It was among those featured during the first two years of Fondren’s Bottle Tree and Garden Tour.

“Scatter my ashes around the plum and fig trees,” he told his wife teasingly. “With you, they’re going to need some extra help.”

Mark was born July 28, 1953, in Jackson, Mississippi, to John and Nell (Pitts) Osborne Sr. He attended Duling Elementary and graduated from Murrah High. As a youth, he played in the woods of his grandparents’ farm in Cotton Plant, Mississippi, with older brother Mack. In school, he played baseball, football and basketball.

Always an animal lover, he had a pet boa constrictor growing up. The family also had other pets – a dog, of course – but also several snakes, skunks and even a mysterious goat for a brief period. Over a span of 30 years, Mark and Tammy had 13 dogs, from Shar Peis to stray pit bulls, and he nicknamed and worried about feral cats next door. He teared up and had to turn off TV ads about abused and neglected animals.

Growing up Mark, along with his parents and two brothers and two sisters, were members of Woodland Hills Baptist Church. In 1973, at a meeting packed with some 3,000 members, the church voted down a proposal to accept Black members. Mark, 20 at the time, had voted for it. Angered, he attacked the preacher before other members pulled him out of the sanctuary.

Shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He never hid his diagnosis and later, as a recovering alcoholic, would share his experience with others if he found it useful. If surprised, he would, with a sly smile, tell people not to worry, he stayed on his “crazy” medicine “most of the time.”

Mark attended the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, majoring in political science, but left school his junior year. In 1975, he married Debbie Parmley. In 1979, son Charlie was born, joining his older half-sister, Marianne.

The couple later divorced. That was followed by a brief second marriage before his marriage to Tammy in 1999.

Mark held a number of jobs during his younger years. He worked on a road crew, at a gas station, as a garbage man and a zookeeper at the Jackson Zoo – elephants were his favorite. He also worked at Callaway Yard and Garden, briefly owned his own lawn business, and taught landscaping at the Job Corps in Crystal Springs.

Ultimately, he would end up working at Carroll’s Landscape Services for four decades. Mark found his passion in plants and had remarkable knowledge about names and growing habits. And he never forgot good advice. He would often say, “this is how Mr. (Ronnie) Carroll did it.”

For a time when Mark’s vehicle was broken down and he had to get to work, he would walk some four miles to the nursery on Northside Drive, starting early so he wouldn’t be late.

Mark was a unique artist and had his own style – as did his mother and siblings. He would paint abstracts, nudes, portraits, nature, animals, messages – and most had a spiritual bent. He painted for himself, but he did have one small art show at the neighboring Cups coffee shop.

He also wrote poetry and essays and loved music. He had a massive record collection and knew detailed stories and histories of bands and songs. He could listen to music for hours on end and always went to bed with music playing or the radio on. He also made “mixed” cassette tapes for friends before CDs came on the scene, picking out songs he thought they would like or needed to hear.

Mark had an incredible voice and liked to sing around the house or on phone calls or voice mails to Tammy. He never sang publicly except for a beautifully haunting rendition of “Danny Boy” at family gatherings.

Some of his favorite artists included Marc Cohn, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Muddy Waters, John Prine and Leonard Cohen.

He also liked to dance in a uniquely “Mark” fashion – a combination of hands-in-the-air revival shaking and juke-joint hip swiveling.

Mark truly was an “old soul,” and he had an interest in anything rusty, bottles (he had a massive collection), old tools, wooden boxes, trunks and discarded items on the street. For a time, he had a booth at the flea market on High Street. The items he sold were as unique as the stories that came with them. Often people would linger at the booth just to hear his stories.

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, a tree came through Mark and Tammy’s house. After a long repair process that included moving flea market items to a storage unit, the couple had a storage building constructed in their backyard by friend JW (Jerry Williams.) They stopped selling items and instead created “the shed,” a cross between a juke joint and a South Dakota (Tammy’s home state) bar.

Some 10 years later, the couple would join forces with JW again to rehab a rundown house for a retired journalist friend of Tammy’s living in poverty in West Virginia. Next door to the house was another house, partially burned and owned by an out-of-state corporation. JW was gifted in fixing houses for others, but never owned his own. Mark and Tammy managed to buy it for JW to fix it up as his own and then pay them back over time. He did and still lives there today. It was all done with a handshake.

Mark loved to celebrate his birthday – not so much his belly button birthday but his sobriety birthday – May 1, 1989. He was 36 then and would become a fixture at AA meetings at the YANA club and 4801. He kept his collection of chips in a small glass jar on his bookshelf.

He didn’t officially “sponsor” much – but he was always available to visit with anybody. It wasn’t unusual for him to give folks rides, let them crash briefly at his house, get them a one-night motel room if on the street, try to get them into rehab or haul somebody to the ER.

It was also at YANA that Mark met Tammy. She always seemed to be cold, so he gave her his jacket – a jacket that once belonged to boss Ronnie Carroll. His wife Betty had given it to Mark.

Tammy would wear, then wear out, that jacket, but never got rid of it. She wore it around the house in Mark’s final days as a reminder of their beginning.

The couple married on a Thursday night, Aug. 19, 1999, in the backyard of their Fondren home. It was a word-of-mouth, come-as-you-are invite. Mark didn’t tell his parents until that morning but that didn’t keep John and Nell from going into high gear making pimento cheese sandwiches.

Tammy wore her engagement ring – a piece of shoestring wrapped around her finger – with pride for months until they “upgraded” to a CZ. Mark would constantly lose his wedding ring so they just started getting him rings as needed in a bargain bin at a flea market. On their anniversary they would dance in the living room to the Marc Cohn song, “True Companion.” It was a song Mark had labeled “our song” when they first started dating.

Tammy was the love of Mark’s life, and Mark was never the same after meeting her. He was always aglow, happy and content. The romantic side of Mark was never more prominent. It was as though they were always on their first date. Never were two people more meant for one another.

Mark was beloved by Tammy’s family. He often spent more time talking to her dad, Wayne, than Tammy did. He adored her sister, Cherie. The laughter never stopped when the two were together. He made the South Dakota girl learn the “Hotty Toddy” cheer and she made him ride horses in the Badlands. When they went to the ranch of Tammy’s late mother, Fae,

Mark would help fix fence, plant trees and wash dishes. On his first trip to the state, he was shocked by the beauty of the stars in the sky. It looked like someone spilled glitter everywhere. He spent hours lying in the bed of a pickup truck at night, staring at the stars.

Mark loved his family deeply, with the saying “like father, like son” hitting close to home. It was 15 years ago, Oct. 21, that son Charlie got sober. Today, the happily married husband and father of two little girls and three older stepchildren is a clinical director of a rehab facility in Ogden, Utah, has his own counseling practice and teaches college courses at two universities.

When Charlie recently visited, Mark gave him his most precious keepsake – his jar of AA chips.

Mark was also extremely proud of his younger twin siblings. Jayne, now a retired teacher living in Houston, traveled to Kazakhstan to adopt her precious son, Noah, nearly 18 years ago. Later diagnosed with autism, Noah has made incredible strides under Jayne’s guiding hand. Mark was so taken by one of Noah’s descriptions that he painted Noah a picture based on it.

Wayne, a family fund manager for one of the wealthiest men in the world, is also an accomplished painter, writer and recorded composer. Mark would often listen to Wayne’s songs once he mastered the art of requests on Alexa.

Because of his long arms, Mark’s nickname as a youth was “Magilla Gorilla.” It eventually became “Giller,” still often used by older brother Mack, and “Gilro,” a name that Mark put on many of his paintings.

Wayne composed a song just for Mark – “Ode to Magilla Gorilla” – that he was able to hear over the phone shortly before his death.

And thanks to a trip to see Wayne in California, Mark was able to fulfill one of his dreams – wading in the ocean and hugging a giant redwood.

His bond with older brother Mack, though, was like no other. He saw the Mack of his youth transform into a compassionate, stabilizing force in his life and in the lives of many others. He was amazed at Mack’s ability to turn rundown houses into rentals, his physical stamina and work ethic. And Mark was always enthused about his brother’s incredible artistic creativity.

They both cheered for Ole Miss and if there was a sport Mark wasn’t following closely, he would always cheer for Mack’s favorite team, as then would Tammy. They liked going to the Ag Museum together for lunch every now and then. And when Tammy couldn’t convince Mark to do something, Mack could.

She was shocked the day Mark came home with a Smartphone just a few months before his death. She had tried to get him to get one for years. It took Mack an hour and a trip to a store.

When their father was left a widower, Mack took care of many of John’s unexpected needs, and Mark always got him to Woodland Hills Baptist Church on Sunday mornings.

And the two never directly criticized one another’s efforts. If they saw room for improvement, the phrase always started, “Nell said….”

Mark was preceded in death by his parents, John and Nell Osborne, and his sister Anna Lynn, who was killed along with her boyfriend and another college student, on a road trip to Mississippi State University.

He was also preceded in death by nephews John IV and Michael.

He is survived by wife Tammy Ramsdell; son Charlie (Jennifer) and granddaughters Riley and Emma, Ogden, Utah; brothers Mack, Jackson; and Wayne (Greg Price), Palo Alto, Calif.; Jayne and nephew Noah, Houston; nieces Alison (Martin) Smith and children Greta, Liam and Henry, Birmingham; Amy (Blake) Barnett and children Sam, Nellie and Sophia; John’s widow Amanda and children Annelise and Ivy; and great-nephew Hunter Osborne, Somers, New York.