This challenge is set forth by No Story Too Small, and this week’s theme is “different.”

My grandmother died March 1, 1975

Meridian Star

March 4, 1975 

Mrs. Ina Culpepper

Services for Mrs. Ina Inez Culpepper, 60, were to be held at 10 a.m. today at Stephens Funeral Home Chapel, Revs. Roger Leggert and Charles Davis officiating. Burial was to be in Liberty Cemetery, Newton County.

Mrs. Culpepper died Saturday in a Meridian hospital. She was a member of First Pentecostal Holiness Church.

Survivors include her husband, Earl W. Culpepper, Meridian; two daughters, Mrs. Bobbie McQueen, Meehan, Mrs. Linda Hegwood, Utica, Mich.; two sisters, Mrs. Ellen Scarbrough, Houston, Tex., Mrs. Myrnis Howard, Meridian; three brothers, Willam Otho Burke, James Otis Burke, and E. O. Burke, all of Duffee, and four grandchildren. 

Ina was my maternal grandmother. She was born in 1915 to Mary Elizabeth Howington and John Patrick “Pat” Burke. Her Howington side was English and Choctaw Indian. Her Burke side was English and Irish. She was the eldest, with four little brothers and two little sisters. One of the boys died as an infant, but the rest of her siblings outlived her and are listed in her obituary. Her mother also outlived her by two years, but for some reason, is not listed.

At the age of 21 in 1936, Ina married Earl Culpepper and had two daughters, one in 1938 and one in 1944. She worked as a seamstress at Burnley Shirt Factory in Meridian, MS and could sew anything just by looking at it in the store for a few minutes. She was a fabulous cook, a quiet woman, and she loved her four grandchildren. The little girl in the photo is me. 🙂

We always celebrated her birthday on February 9. Her tombstone says February 9. Her death certificate says February 9.

Her birth certificate says February 8. It was signed on February 8. It was filed in the state of MS on February 8.