Barbara Rhea Conner, 93, of Franklin, Tenn., entered her heavenly home on April 9, 2024. She was born November 6, 1930, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Frank and Anna Casteel Spence. She was raised in Miami, Oklahoma, where she developed a love for Jesus, teaching, music, and running faster and shooting the BB gun better than all the boys in her neighborhood.
After graduating salutatorian of her high school class, she attended Northeastern Oklahoma A & M College in Miami. During her sophomore year, she met her future husband Ray Conner when he was home on a short military leave to visit his parents. Ray was asked to sing a song in church one Sunday, and as the church pianist, Barbara accompanied him. That would be the beginning of 74 years of a beautiful partnership. Ray hitchhiked home to Miami every weekend for 16 weeks from his military base in Texas so he could go see his girl. They married June 18, 1950.
Barbara and Ray had many adventures, moving to several states during their marriage and raising three busy girls. She taught elementary and high school for several years, and when they moved to Tennessee, she started working at the Southern Baptist Stewardship Commission. In 1981, The Oklahoman newspaper wrote an article boasting about their hometown native being elected to the commission’s professional staff as a publishing supervisor. She was the first woman to ever hold a professional staff position in the agency, and she worked there until her retirement in 1997.
In her retirement years, Barbara and Ray were able to travel on many cruises together and all over Europe, but their favorite respite was to the Smoky Mountains. She enjoyed reading, working puzzles, and watching many Vanderbilt basketball games. As Ray continued teaching at Belmont University, Barbara had a tradition of bringing his classes apple pies and other baked goods each semester, and each class looked forward to her delicious treats. She was very active in her church, First Baptist Nashville, where she sang in the choir, taught Sunday School, served on committees, and stayed active with her Senior Adult Sunday School class. Barbara loved to shop for unique and personal gifts from catalogs, so each Christmas she would watch expectantly for the reactions of each family member as they would open her carefully selected surprises.
Left to cherish her memory are her husband of 74 years, Ray Conner of Franklin, Tenn.; her children: Mary Conner Collier (Bill) of Durham, N.C., Martha Conner Miller (Frank) of Franklin, Tenn., and Becky Conner North (Frank) of Midlothian, Va.; her grandchildren: Jason Miller (Anna) of Franklin, Tenn., Holly Miller Pemberton (David) of Knoxville, Tenn., Kathryn Collier Brodkin (Seth) of Chapel Hill, N.C., Laura Collier of Napa, Calif., Josh Miller of Smyrna, Tenn., Meghan North Nakamura (Tatsuya) of Yorktown, Va., and Lindsey North (Katie Francis) of Tucson, Ariz.; her great-grandchildren: Ian Conner Miller, Elliana Miller, Asher Miller, Greta Brodkin, and Max Brodkin.
Barbara was preceded in death by her parents, Frank and Anna Casteel Spence of Miami, Okla.
Visitation will be held from 11:00-1:00, Friday, April 19, at Brentwood Roesch-Patton Funeral Home in Brentwood, Tenn., with the memorial service following at 1:00 p.m.
Memorials can be made to: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
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