Mae Sellers Bird

Mae Sellers Bird of Alexandria, Virginia, departed this life on October 28, 2024. Mae was born in Montgomery, Alabama, August 22, 1927, to William Edward Sellers (1875-1948) and Eddie Esther Lawrence (1888-1950). She was pre-deceased by her parents, her siblings Joseph Wade Sellers and Irma Amanda Sellers Woodruff, and by her husband William (Bill) Alvin Bird (1926-2002), whom she married February 19, 1944. Her grandson Jason Tyner was born and died in 1980.

Mae is survived by her son, Ronald Bird, and daughter, Janet Bird, by grandsons David Bird (Jennifer Parry), Christopher Bird, John Tyner, Peter Tyner, great grandchild Bird Parry, nieces Camille Woodruff and Susan Bird, nephews William Woodruff, Joseph Woodruff, and Kenneth Bird, and numerous great nieces/nephews and cousins of Woodruff, Sellers and Bird families.

Mae was baptized and confirmed at Forest Avenue Methodist Church in Montgomery, and she and Bill attended Dalriada Church of Christ for many years. Until she moved to Sunrise Senior Living in Alexandria, Mae lived most of her life in Montgomery. From 1964 to 2021 Mae lived in the Bellehurst neighborhood, where she was active in the garden club. She worked primarily as a homemaker in support of her husband’s careers in the U.S. Air Force and Federal Civil Service and as a mother to her children.

Mae was an early devotee of healthy nutrition. She learned to make yogurt at home in the 1950s, long before it was available on Montgomery grocery store shelves. Her children faced a row of vitamin and mineral tablets at the breakfast table each morning.

She was a culinary pioneer who learned Tex/Mex cuisine from Air Force friends in the 1950s, and who learned to make pizza before it was a popular fast-food item in Montgomery.

She supported civil rights by providing transportation assistance to African-American workers during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1954.

Mae worked part-time for many years at the Montgomery County Probate Court offices where she purged deceased citizen names from the voter rolls. She was active as a volunteer at the Montgomery Public Library and at the Montgomery East Baptist Hospital. She and Bill were long-time members of the Maxwell Air Force Base Officers Club and of the Crump Senior Center, where she managed the library and assisted in the income tax preparation assistance program.

Mae was a life-long gardener, and she devoted many hours to cultivating and propagating Spring daffodils. Her daffodil bulbs preceded her to Virginia, where they were shared with Ron’s husband, Peter Folger Stetson, at Roseland Farm in Culpeper County and subsequently passed along to dozens of other members of the Culpeper Garden Club.

Mae and Bill were diligent genealogical researchers who traced and compiled extensive records for their respective family trees, including Sellers, Lawrence, Copeland, Frizzel, Smilie, Edwards, McNeal, and Ellis ancestors in Alabama on her side and Bird, Bedsole, Stough, Woodruff, Champion, and Gooch on Bill’s family side. She and Bill supported the maintenance and documentation of Rocky Mount (Highland Home) and Bethlehem Primitive Baptist Church cemeteries.

Mae’s interest in genealogy was spurred by the fourth grade Highland Avenue School Alabama history textbook story of her great-great grandmother, Temperance Ellis (1783 – 1865), who lived as a captive of the Creek Tribe of native Americans from 1787 to 1796 after surviving a massacre on a frontier farm in Alabama Territory. Temperance married Thomas Frizzel in 1806 and they eventually settled in Pike County, Alabama.

During the last seven years of her life, Mae was physically unable to attend worship services in person, but she enjoyed immensely the televised services of the Montgomery First Methodist Church.

In lieu of flowers, the family invites donations in her memory to the Montgomery First Methodist Church, the Alabama Department of Archives and History, or the Culpeper, Virginia, Garden Club.

Leak Memory Chapel of Montgomery will coordinate a private family burial at Greenwood Cemetery on Saturday, November 16, 2024.