A Celebration of Life Service for Eilene Ruth Jesson Bates of Corinth will be Sunday, September 22, 2024, at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The Rev. Dr. Josh Shipman will lead the service.
Visitation will be in the church parish hall from 3 p.m. until service starts.
Despite her frequent insistence in recent years that her death was imminent, Mrs. Bates reached the age of 97 before she departed this earth on September 5, 2024. She was born on June 4, 1927, in Derry, Pennsylvania to Thomas Paul Jesson and June Rose Gordon Jesson.
She was the middle child, with two older sisters and two younger brothers. The family moved to Lexington, Ohio, where she attended grade school through high school. She often reminisced about roaming the woods and creeks in rural Ohio during her childhood, developing a love of nature she passed on to daughters Susan and Lisa. She played snare drums in the Lexington High School marching band alongside her lifelong friend Mary Jane Stull Jesson, who played the bass drum and later married Eilene’s brother Roger.
After graduation from Lexington High School, she studied education at Bowling Green University for one year. She met her husband of 54 years after he returned from overseas service in World War II. They were married on March 19, 1949, in Lexington. After their daughters were born, Ed’s work took the family around the country with stops in Georgia, Washington, Idaho, and Pennsylvania. Eilene took every move in stride, making new friends, leading Sunday School classes and brownie troops, and .selling many houses along the way.": Later in life she volunteered to sit with hospice patients and taught a safe driving course for senior citizens.
Back in Ohio by the mid-1960s, she continued to read voraciously. She was not afraid to speak her mind politically or to stand up for the rights of others. She returned to college in 1968. When a professor called students of her age “drop-ins” she replied she preferred the term “retread.” Taking a heavy courseload and summer school classes, she completed her education degree at Ashland College (now Ashland University) in time to graduate the same week her elder daughter graduated from high school.
In later years, Eilene shared many travels and a love of gardening with husband Ed. This may account for their daughters’ wanderlust and green thumbs. Widowed in Georgia in 2003, Eilene moved back to Lexington, where she planned and subcontracted the complete remodeling of an older home for herself. Ever the nomad, she returned to Georgia a few years later, then to Mississippi several months before her 90th birthday.
Eilene lived independently in a downtown Corinth apartment for six years. She made many friends on long walks throughout the downtown area, including the staff at Corinth Public Library a mile roundtrip from her apartment. She was a frequent patron of the Corinth Artist Guild Gallery until it closed in 2019 and spent many hours there chatting with friends Sonny Boatman and Ed Lucas.
In addition to her parents, Eilene was preceded in death by her husband Edward Bates and by her sisters, Marjorie Simon and Rita Ford and brothers, Roger Jesson and Donne Jesson. She is survived by daughters Susan Bates Adams (Jim) and Lisa Bates, granddaughter Kate Adams Braddock (J.D.), great-grandchildren, Jack Braddock and Savannah Braddock, and a host of nieces and nephews.
The family is especially thankful for the loving care their mother received living at Country Cottage for almost two years. They also are grateful for the recent caregivers from Vital Caring Hospice who helped during her in her final weeks.
At Mrs. Bates’s request, in lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (P.O. Box 1225, Corinth, MS, 38835).
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