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- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 14 May 2006.
There’s nothing a Southerner likes better than a good funeral, and Saturday’s interment of the ashes of Phyllis Mackie Thurlow in Newport’s Union Cemetery was a dandy.
Thurlow’s family and friends came from California, Colorado, and Arizona to oversee the placement of her ashes in the family’s burial plot and to speak lovingly of her. The cask containing Thurlow’s remains was wrapped in her Mackie kilt, beautifully fashioned from red and white plaid.
According to her family, the Mackie family and the McKay family, early Cocke County settlers, were “the same clan.”
Phyllis Mackie Thurlow was born in Massachusetts, a daughter of Charles and Hilda Mackie. Through her Scottish father and her Swedish mother, she was just a couple of generations away from her immigrant ancestors.
A highlight of the morning service was the music provided by the Knoxville Pipes and Drum Corps. Outfitted in full Scottish kilts and accompanying regalia, the group paraded from the lower part of the cemetery to the family plot while playing traditional Scottish tunes.
Saturday’s crispy clear weather brought with it an astounding view of the distant Smoky Mountains and with tombstones bearing such names as McNabb, McMahan, and Brown surrounding the spot, the music provided just the right touch for the ceremony.
Thurlow, who died December 28, 2005, was the wife of Paul Thurlow, whose Newport connection comes through his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Charles Brown, who pastored Newport’s First Baptist Church in the early 1900s.
Thurlow’s mother, Winnie, was one of five Brown daughters, all of whom, according to Paul, earned college degrees from such prestigious universities as Cornell and Columbia in an era when such higher education for females was rare.
Eventually Winnie Brown Thurlow became a librarian in Washington, DC at the Library of Congress.
Her only child, Paul, then attended MIT. It was here that he first met sixteen-year-old Phyllis Mackie, and the two eventually married in 1948.
Speaking of his late wife at Saturday’s gathering, Paul Thurlow enumerated several big choices his wife made during their marriage. Ranging from her decision to postpone the completion of her own college degree in order to marry and accompany him to the University of Cincinnati where he had earned a fellowship to her chance meeting with a Vietnamese refugee in a California supermarket which resulted in his wife’s offer to tutor the woman in English so that she could get a job, he summarized his wife as “a good presence in this world.”
Also speaking were Pamela Thurlow Thomas and Mark Thurlow, children of Paul and Phyllis. Pamela Thomas used the initials of her mother’s first name to describe her mother, using terms such as “passionate” and “sincerity” to convey her impressions of her mother’s life.
Mark Thurlow shared “Best Mom Memories” and used examples such as his mother’s love of all types of music to the surprise purchase of a sailboat for his father. He spoke of his mother’s “sacrificial love” for her family and thanked his mother for her lessons in valuing people and enjoying God’s gifts.
At the end of the service, the pipers played “Amazing Grace,” a fitting conclusion to the moving service. Family and friends then gathered for a good old-fashioned Southern funeral feast to continue their reminiscences of their loved one.
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