Donie Grace Vance

Jackson

Mrs. Donie Grace Clarke Vance peacefully departed this life Thursday, October 13, 2011 at Highland Home Nursing Center. She was 91, a longtime resident of Jackson and a member of Forest Hill United Methodist Church.

Grace was born September 16, 1920 in Union, Mississippi, the daughter of Walton G. and Evie Rhue Stribling Clarke, and grew up in Union and Talladega, Alabama. She graduated Talladega High School in 1938. In her younger years she studied ballet, and was very active in assisting local stage productions and pageants in the Talladega community.

On the eve of World War ll in 1941 she married Lt. Harry Cooper Brown, and the couple lived in Columbus, Georgia where Lt. Brown was stationed at Fort Benning as an infantry reconnaissance instructor. He was deployed to Europe early in 1944 and died in the service of his country in June, 1944.

As a young war widow with an infant son, Grace lived with her family in north Alabama until 1947, when they returned to Union, where generations of her family had resided. Working as a bookkeeper at the local office of Mississippi Power Company, Grace continued to work with young people, teaching dance and assisting with school productions. She was very active in the local Methodist Church, where she organized youth activities which gave many young people a great enthusiasm for participation in the life of the small church.

In 1952, a co-worker's wife introduced Grace to her brother, Major Haskell (Hack) Vance, a widowed father of a young daughter living in Jackson. In April, 1954, they were married in Union Methodist Church and began a loving life together in Jackson that would encompass half a century.

Their marriage was blessed with two daughters, and Grace continued to be active in church and school affairs, always supportive of her children’s interests, with the close eye on their welfare of a stay-at-home Mom. She and Hack built their retirement home just outside of Jackson with a stable for the kids' horses and ample space for the gatherings of a growing extended family. She was truly a homemaker in the finest sense, a devoted wife and mother who upheld and instilled the values which had sustained and strengthened her generation.

Grace was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Gen. Haskell Gore "Hack" Vance; and her sister, Nann Clarke. She is survived and held in loving memory by her brother, Kenneth Clarke of Union; son, Harry C. Brown, Jr. (Susan) and daughters Carmen Anne Usry, Vicki Lynn Bounds, and Sue Carole Chisolm (Dwayne), and her "fourth daughter" and beloved caregiver, Gloria Stone; she leaves eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren who were the delight of her life.

Funeral services will be held at Baldwin Lee Funeral Home in Jackson Saturday, October 15 at 1:30pm with the Rev. Carl Prewitt officiating. Interment will follow at Lakewood South. Visitation will be from 5:00pm to 8:00pm Friday evening and for one hour prior to the service.

In lieu of flowers the family requests that donations in Grace’s memory be made to the Mississippi Alzheimer’s Association or to the Salvation Army.