Donna Leah Emery

Donna was born in Houston, Texas, to Geraldine Sangster and Otis Nash. She is preceded in death by her parents and brother, Ronnie. She is survived by her husband, Benjamin, of thirty-one years, daughters Hannah, Lauren, stepdaughter, Heather, (husband Alex), and stepson, Darson (wife Erika), adopted daughter, Tasha, her grandchildren Grayson, Ronnie Emery, Timothy, Levi, Cierra, Douglass, her great-grandchildren, Lylah, Neveah, Jasper, Dawson, Ryan, Ameelia, Harrison, Spencer, Violet, sister-in-law, Rachel Nash, nieces Angel Bockman (husband Brandon) and Dallas Tolson (Chris) and their children.

She grew up in Shepard, Texas, alongside her brother, Ronnie, where they spent their days jumping off of roofs into bales of hay, fishing, and riding their bikes around exploring their small town. They’d also spend time tending to and riding horses. They grew up with a particularly aggressive Shetland named Duke who would often dump the rider into the field or chase after them trying to bite them.

Donna served her community as a dispatcher for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department for ten years. She was known to be quite the prankster while working there and would often take lead in schemes against other officers. Officers would often call in “suspects” with risqué names that she would have to confirm. In retaliation, she had officers sent on a call the Houston Zoo to speak to a “Mister Joe Raff.” Time away from work was spent being the life of every party she either hosted, attended, or even crashed.

In the early 90s, she left Shepard to move closer to her parents in Mountainburg, Arkansas. Once getting settled she decided she wanted to be an EMT and enrolled at West Ark community in the summer of 1992. It was there she met her husband, Benjamin. After a whirlwind romance they married on January 20, 1993. Donna and Benjamin returned to Texas a few years later, following her parents and settling in Nacogdoches, Texas. She began a career at Wal-Mart and was employed there for twenty-six years, the majority of them in Personnel where she made life -long friends. They returned to Fort Smith, Arkansas in the summer of 2016 to help care for Benjamin’s parents.

To those that knew her, she was a vibrant and boisterous woman who loved her family fiercely, even any new additions through birth or marriage. She was an avid and devoted fan of the Dallas Cowboys, despite dismal seasons, and loved to travel to the beach or concerts any chance she was able to. Any opportunity that she could take to scare her husband, she took, traits she learned from her uncles growing up. She’d often sit out on her porch in the dark at night and slam a door when he’d return home from late nights at work and would laugh endlessly while he just shook his head and recovered.

A private memorial will be held on Monday for family and close friends. Family requests that flowers are not needed and sympathy card as welcome.