Tennessee Pounds

Tennessee Creekmore Pounds, 95, died July 18, 2011, at the Frontier Rehabilitation Center in Longview, Washington.

Tennessee was born Jan. 13, 1916, in Clovis, New Mexico. She was the only child of Green Berry and Elizabeth Blankenship Creekmore. Green Berry lived in Tennessee for 52 years where he raised nine children before moving to New Mexico in 1905. He married for a second time in 1915.

The Creekmore family initially lived in a oneroom house with a dirt floor on a 160acre homestead five miles north of Clovis. They hauled water from town until 1920 when they got a well and windmill. Since they couldnt afford a car until after 1930, Tennessee remembered being embarrassed and hiding behind the isinglass curtains in her fathers horsedrawn wagon when they went to town.

She met her future husband while he delivered blocks of ice to the outlying farms. Tennessee married Ernest V. Pounds in 1934 during her senior year of high school and they were married for 51 years. In 2003, eighteen years after her husband died, Tennessee moved to Longview WA to be closer to her daughters family.

Tennessees life focused on the many friends she had in the First Baptist Churches of Clovis and Longview. She also enjoyed visiting family and friends in Oklahoma, Colorado, Chicago, and Tennessee. She was especially happy to be able to return to Clovis in 2007 for the 100th anniversary celebration of her beloved First Baptist Church.

Tennessee was preceded in death by her husband and nine halfbrothers and halfsisters. She is survived by a daughter, Marilyn Michael Perry of Kelso, WA and a grandson, Stephen Perry of Kelso, WA.

Tennessee will be buried next to her husband and her parents in Clovis. Friends are invited to a memorial reception between 5 and 7 p.m. Thursday at the home of Nancy and RoGene Chaddick 7625796 at 325 Olive Drive in Clovis.

The family suggests remembrances be made to First Baptist Church, P.O. Box 1015, Clovis, NM 88102.

Arrangements are under the direction of SteedTodd Funeral Home Cremation Services, 800 E. Manana Blvd., Clovis, New Mexico 88101, 5757635541. Visit www.steedtodd.com to sign the online guestbook.

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