Caroline Talley Whitaker

A lady always knows when to leave. Caroline Talley Whitaker, Mother, Grandmother, Gram, our most beloved matriarch of 90 years, took her final leave in the early morning hours of July 9, 2026 in her home in Lubbock, TX. “She is glowing!” they told us, but we could have guessed as much, because she entered the world that same way on April 6, 1936 in Chattanooga, TN. Her doting parents Benjamin Lewis Talley and Louise Lenora Homan, raised three girls, of which she was the eldest, on the back of a family-owned restaurant, their namesake, the Talley-Ho, where you could find her on a pair of roller skates serving their customers at the drive-up. While Caroline loved her family and their bustling business, she was also fiercely independent and made her own way, collecting a variety of hobbies and interests throughout her years at Chattanooga High School (Y-Teens, Hi-Steppers, Boosters and Girl’s Service Club). After high school, she left Tennessee for Georgia where she attended Wesleyan College, an all-girls school where the news of dates between co-eds was published in the school newspaper. Caroline was published many-a-time as the Mercer men down the road could not resist her sparkle. She married one such man on November 6, 1955 in Macon, GA where they built a beautiful family, complete with three incredible daughters, Kim, Terry, and Martha and one very special son, Ben.

Caroline and her family moved to Abilene, Texas in the summer of 1971, buying a new house on Post Oak Road where she would remain for over four decades. That house would welcome her children, her eight grandchildren, and some of her twelve great-grandchildren with a kitchen full of baked goods, pre-cooked, frozen, and now counter-thawing, which is why her family firmly believes a cold brownie is the best brownie. On Thanksgiving and Christmas the alarm clock was the smell of bacon and during dinner the kids would throw her coveted rolls at each other from the kitchen, while the adults dined in the formal dining room. Come to find out, throwing rolls across the living room was not good manners, but ultimately, they knew there was nothing they could ever do to escape her abundant and affectionate love, so game on!

While most Grandmothers were wearing SAS shoes and house dresses, Caroline was wearing pencil skirts and smart looking pumps in her role as radio account executive where she paved the way for women in a traditionally male-dominated space. She was a very successful career-woman using her charm and precise subtlety as a cover for her fierce determination and exceptional business savvy, leading her to retire as part owner of the radio station. Some grandmothers made their grandkids cookies and came to their games and grandmothers like Caroline baked the cookies, came to the games AND made them mixed tapes of songs from the radio station AND took them into the DJ booth AND got them the coolest SWAG from events before SWAG was even a thing AND let them visit the station basement where the world’s coldest bottled Coca-Cola lived, and yes, they’d get to drink it!

Caroline did everything in excess; it was her nature and the only way she saw fit to live a life, fully and completely. She loved her people excessively. She lavished us with her love. She never withheld a hug, a kiss, a chance to say “I love you, hunny!” And it was hunny, not honey. And she loved us all enough to be honest and forthright. And if we ever disappointed her, she’d still make us a pound cake and cheese grits every morning we were visiting. She gave us her very best. She never tired of the cooking and the pre-cooking and the hosting and the cleaning and the forgotten wrappers from the strawberry candy strewn all over her home, and the red Hi-C juice boxes that we snuck into the back bedroom and spilled. We were the worst, but her home was the center of our very BEST! She was the ultimate memory facilitator and we are the keepers!

If she wasn’t in Texas, you’d find Caroline at the beach; her happiest place. She loved any beach, but she was most partial to the one of her youth, Myrtle Beach, SC, on the Atlantic coast. It’s here, where she’s chosen to be laid to rest, amongst the waves, near the white sand and underneath the same sun she was born to embody. We will honor her wishes with great gladness and joy. Caroline is preceded in death by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Talley, and her son, Bennett Hill Whitaker III. She leaves her light here with her two sisters and their families, Janice and Danny Miles of Hartsville, SC and Elizabeth and Lamar Fossett of Signal Mountain, TN, her three daughters and their families, Kim and Bruce Evans of Fayetteville, AR, Terry and Dee Wickson of Lubbock, TX, Martha and Mark Reedy of Lubbock, TX and her grandchildren and their families, Katie and Justin Cox of Fayetteville, AR and their children Caden and Kaki, Emily and Josh Evans of Nacogdoches, TX and their son Whit, Amanda and Rick Leach of Lubbock, TX and their sons, Cy and Ryan, Michelle and Kaleb Clay of Abilene, TX and their daughters, Kendall and Kennedy, Shannon and Will McCutcheon of Lubbock, TX and their sons, Wells and Myles, Holly and Clay Reedy of College Station, TX and their children, Sutton and Knox, Kathleen and Thayer Atkins of Austin, TX and their son, Bear and Kyle Reedy of Dallas, TX.

Caroline’s legacy is the light she leaves behind in the lives of her most-precious loves. She taught us that light can take many forms. It may look like a hamburger cooked fresh and delivered with a smile by a waitress on wheels, and it may look like having a counter full of snacks waiting to be eaten. It can look like a gaggle of girls all standing in front of a mirror, spraying their hair with Grandmother’s Shaper. It can look like building a pool in your backyard for your grandkids, it can look like a hug at the door. It can look like a coat rack to hang your jacket. It can look like a mischievous smile while eating ice cream. It can look like paying your grandkids money to collect pecans. It can look like joining social media in your 80s to keep up with your family. It can be literal, like the candles in a window at Christmas. It can look like a grandmother holding her twelfth great-grandchild, the baby’s grandbaby, for the first time. It can look like waiting for a daughter to return from vacation and putting your hearing aids in to make your final phone call. It might look like making a new friend who brings you unexpected comfort in your final days. The one thing light can never look like though, is dark. Darkness cannot overcome the light. The light will always win. Even in death. “She’s glowing!” they said. Of course she is.