Virginia Dawn Hunter, 96, passed away on Monday, May 23, 2016, in Temple, Texas. Visitation will be at Crawford-Bowers Funeral Home in Temple on Tuesday, May 31, from 5:00-7:00pm. A graveside service with Temple’s Memorial Baptist Church Pastor, Ridge Adams officiating, will be at Lakeland Hills Memorial Park, on Park Road 4 between Burnet and Marble Falls, TX, Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at 11:00am.
Mrs. Hunter was born July 10, 1919, at her grandmother’s house in Delaware, Oklahoma. Soon after her family moved to Eldorado, Kansas, where she grew up on a Gulf Oil lease until her father’s job transferred the family to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mrs. Hunter was a 1938 graduate of Tulsa High School where she played violin in the school orchestra, church orchestras on Sunday and with a group of student musicians who recorded music for commercials on Tulsa’s radio station KOOV. After high school Mrs. Hunter attended Tulsa University for a year and then the University of Oklahoma where she graduated in 1942, majoring in Music Education.
June 10, 1942, Mrs. Hunter married H. Duane Hunter, also an OU music major, from McAlester, Oklahoma. They were married for 53 years. Mr. Hunter was the band director and an administrator in Rosebud, TX school for 27 years. During that time Mrs. Hunter taught piano, violin, and voice in her home. After they retired they moved to Lake Buchannan. After Mr. Hunter’s death, Mrs. Hunter moved to the Temple Meridian where she resided at the time of her death.
Wherever she lived, Mrs. Hunter’s passions were serving in her church and music. She played piano for church services and sang in the choir. She also taught Sunday School and VBS, but her favorite service was with the GA’s (Girl’s Auxiliary). Many women in Central Texas have fond memories of attending the GA’s Baylor House Party as girls for a week in the summer at Baylor University which Mrs. Hunter and the State WMU Director, Marie Mathis, planned and Mrs. Hunter directed. Mrs. Hunter continued leading GA groups at First Baptist Church, Rosebud, and then Chapel of the Hills Baptist Church, Buchannan Dam, until she was 75 years old. At the Temple Meridian she sang with the Meridian Singers as long as she was able.
In addition to her husband who preceded her in death in 1995. Mrs. Hunter is also preceded in death by her parents, O. Clyde and Montee M. Gatrell, and her sister, Betty Lou Knowland.
Survivors include two daughters, Ella Dawn Eiland of Copperas Cove, and Rebecca M. Eastwood of Denton; three grandchildren, Kimberly D. Ungar of Missouri City, LTC Kelly B. Eiland of Cibolo, and Dr. William D. Eastwood of Columbia, MO, and six great grandchildren. Also one niece and three nephews.
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.8.18