Jackie Ruth Lewis Waldrop

Jackie Ruth Lewis Waldrop passed peacefully into eternity on Easter morning 2026, with her family by her side. She was born on Oct. 9, 1937, in Maben, Mississippi, and graduated from Maben HS in 1955. After a year at Wood Junior College, a summer job at Ridgecrest Camp for Girls led her to Mississippi College the next fall, where she met her future husband, Gary, who remained her devoted spouse from their marriage in December 1958 until his death in March 2016.

After dental school and two years in the army at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, Jackie and Gary moved with their two infant sons, Jeff and Art, to Columbus, Mississippi, in the summer of 1963, which would be her home for the next fifty-four years. Dan was born in 1966 and Jon in 1970, and so she blessed the lives of these five men with her joyful and sweet nature, her skills as a homemaker, and the woman's touch they desperately needed.

Jackie was so many things to so many people and so many organizations through the years. An artist by nature, she captured the life around her in photography and painting, and derived great pleasure from playing the piano. She was a member and president of the La Belle Fleur Garden Club, a life member of the Junior Auxiliary, and a Daughter of the American Revolution.

She carpooled her boys to multiple schools in any given year as well as multiple sporting events, many of which were taking place at the same time. An avid reader, she was a devoted “Friend of the Lowndes County Library,” for what else was she to do while waiting in carpool lines or between her children’s events at out-of-town swim meets, when she wasn’t typing result sheets?

As an empty nester, she taught fitness classes at the YMCA and assisted Gary’s dental practice with her administrative skills. She led Gary to catch her wanderlust, and together they traveled throughout Europe and as far as Russia, Istanbul, Morocco, and exotic places along the Mediterranean.

In 2017, she moved to Atlanta to be closer to her sons living in Georgia, and there she was able to spend more time with her devoted family. Her warm smile, her flair for fashion, and her angelic beauty belied the toughness of her spirit, for she fought three different bouts with cancer spanning thirty years, and at the end of her life, battled fiercely the ravages of pain with a clear mind right up until her final days.

Jackie is survived by her four sons: Jeff and children Jeffrey and Sophie (and their mother, Katherine); Art (Kathleen) and children Quin and Eliza; Dan; and Jon (Susan Brackett). Memorials are pending, and in lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to one’s charity of choice in Jackie’s name.

A fitting end and tribute to this wonderful lady’s life was to be called home on Easter Day with her firstborn child holding her. To borrow from Shakespeare’s immortal words: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince[ss], and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”