Henry Lee Mallett was born September 5, 1931, in Camden, Texas. Her parents, Henry and Exie Hardeway Jackson, decided to give her the name of her father, “Henry Lee”—a name she wore proudly all the days of her life.
Henry Lee lived in rural Texas until she moved with her family to Houston’s Trinity Gardens neighborhood in her early teen years. She attended E.O. Smith Junior High and Phillis Wheatley High School where she was a cheerleader and played girls’ basketball. Wheatley was also the place where, in 1947, she met the man who became her husband in a marriage that lasted nearly 60 years and to which five children were born. Trinity Gardens has been her home since 1945, and, at her death, she lived in the home that she and her husband built in 1964, and still owned the house her father built with his own hands out of second-hand wood. No place, no matter how high and fancy, was ever more meaningful to her than her beloved Trinity Gardens and the salt-of-the-earth people who live there.
For more than two decades she was a beloved wife and mother who did not work outside of her home. After all of her children had begun to matriculate successfully in school, Henry Lee sought employment at St. Joseph’s Hospital. She was hired in the Housekeeping unit in which she worked for over forty years. She retained warm and fond memories of her time working at St. Joseph’s. She never thought it beneath her to serve in a housekeeping capacity, as she always commented to her children that all honest work is important, and besides, “the hospital could not run without us.”
Henry Lee’s spiritual life was enriched at an early age when she was baptized at her childhood church and later when her family joined a new church in her Houston neighborhood—Trinity Gardens’ First Baptist Church. She remained a member of “the Garden” for over 75 years. During that time, all of her children and some of her grandchildren were baptized there. She also served as a “doorkeeper in the House of the Lord” as a member of Usher Board No. 2 and was an active member of the women’s auxiliary for many years. She loved her church family.
Henry Lee led a simple life. But it was not without adventures, including the first time she left the state of Texas for a trip to Chicago, Illinois with her husband and brother. She recalled it as a fond memory. Never having experienced real winter weather, she remarked they likely might have frozen to death had they not had the presence of mind—all three of them—to sleep in the same bed! She had never lived alone, and after her husband died, she called a family meeting and expressed to her children that they should get together to determine their “shifts” because she was not, at the age of 76, about to start living alone. Her children regrouped in quick order and remained faithful to their task for the rest of her life. Her family and friends delighted to hear some of her life’s stories because they were always accompanied by her warm and hearty laughter. Henry Lee enjoyed her life, and in the vast sweep of her years, she was unlettered, but not uncouth; unsung but not uncelebrated; unknown but not unacknowledged—and always to her husband and children never unappreciated.
Blessed to live a long life and possessed of a large and loving family and many friends, Henry Lee transitioned this life on Monday, August 8th. Truth be told, she was ready to see her beloved “Junior,” to be reunited with her wonderful mother and father, sister and brothers, her aunts and uncles and closest cousins. She knew that waiting to greet her at the “pearly gates” would be her dear friends who had gone on before her.
Those who will miss her most are her children—Patricia, Muriel (Dwight), Edward Charles, Robert (Valerie), and Mary (Tony)—nine grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, her cousin, Eddie Mae, niece, Veronica, and her nephew Gerald. She left this world with a bushel of close friends and other loved ones. Isn’t it a wonder that a soul who entered and lived in this world so emphatically modest could leave this world so rich and gifted in all the things that matter—a family who loves her deeply, friends who cherish her mightily, and a Savior who welcomes her enthusiastically? May we all be so marvelously and wondrously blessed.
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