Sara Madelyn Harwell Hunt was born as an astrological Leo on August 12,1936, she was the fifth child of James Emerson Harwell and Martha Jeanette Campbell Harwell. The family moved back and forth between Arundell and Meridian, Mississippi during her childhood. Nellie, Ann, Jean and Mary were her older sisters, while her only brother Jimmy would be a year younger than Sara.
An Honor Graduate from Meridian High School and Meridian Junior College, she married Ronald “Bo” Hunt, Sr. and had two children - Suzanne and Ronald, Jr.- before completing her Associates of Arts degree graduating on the President’s List from Bishop State Community College almost forty years later.
She moved to Mobile from Meridian with her friend Carolyn Waltman. She met the future father of her two children at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They married and bought their family home in 1958. They divorced twenty years later.
She volunteered with the PTAs of John Will Elementary and Scarborough Middle Schools, was an officer with the Forest Hill Little League Association, and sang with the Sicilian Chorale and the St. Ignatius Church choir.
Her marriage dissolved in the mid to late 1970s. She was a trail blazer as a divorced woman trying to juggle her children, her new role as head of household, and her desire for companionship.
Voted Member of the Month twice with Parents Without Parents (PWP), her new “family” at PWP celebrated Sara’s fortieth birthday with a chocolate cake with licorice icing and Rest in Peace balloons.
Sara supported both her children in obtaining college degrees, loved music and dancing, and travelled extensively, although she never remarried.
Sara has been to all fifty states, nine Western European countries, mainland China, Egypt, Greece, numerous Caribbean islands including Haiti, Jamaicia, and Grand Cayman, Mexico, Panama, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Canada.
After her retirement from the Mobile County Probate Court in 2009, she volunteered as a Tourism Ambassador for Visit Mobile and organized a Bridge club at the Conny Hudson Senior Center.
We recently celebrated Sara’s 90th Birthday.
Sara is preceded in death by her parents, Jeanette and James Harwell, and her siblings: Nelle Richardson, Jean Smith, Mary Hamilton Scott, and Jimmy Harwell; Her brothers-in-laws: Jasper Richardson, Paul Gay, Jesse Smith, Joseph Clay Hamilton, and Davis Scott, as well as her ex-sister-in-law Quida Tomlinson. A niece and three nephews: Steve Hunt, Ellen Diltz, Clay Hamilton, and Susan Smith Hopkins. Her ex-husband Ronald “Bo” Hunt and ex-brother-in-law Richard "Mac" Gowan Hunt, Sr. and ex-sister-in-law Chloris Hunt.
She is survived by her sister, Ann Gay, her children, Suzanne Hunt and Ronald Hunt, Jr., and many nieces and nephews.
"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the lordis, there is freedom." Corinthian 37:17
Services will be performed by Radney Funeral Home on Monday, November 16, 2026. Visitation with light refreshments from 11am until 1 pm. Celebration of Life commences at 1 pm in the Chapel. Officiating is her nephew, the Reverend John Marshall Hamilton. Interment at Mobile Memorial Gardens following the funeral service.
Pallbearers are as follows: Reuben Dupre, Elbert “PeeWee” Roberts, James “Jay” Robson, Walter Gay and David Peeler.
