OBITUARY INDEX

OBITUARY INDEX

Arkansas County, Arkansas Genealogy Trails

Lois Faye Robertson, 66, of Perryville, MO died Saturday, December 9, 2006 at Perry County Nursing Home in Perryville. She was born Aug. 24, 1940 in Stuttgart, AR, daughter of Clifton and Lydia Crank Leirer. She and Clarence Robertson were married April 17, 1959, at Dexter, MO.
Robertson was a homemaker and loved gardening and quilting. She was of the Church of Christ faith.
Survivors include two daughters, Sheryl Parris of Perryville and Michelle Everson of Peculiar, MO; two sons, Grant Robertson of Lawrence, KS, and John Robertson of Lincoln, CA; four sisters, Dora Bailey of Texas, Ann Lewis of Puxico, MO, Pat Wilcox of Springfield, MO, and Kaye Leirer of Lawrence, KS; three brothers, Glen Leirer of Panana City Beach, FL, Walter Leirer of Destin, FL, and Wayne Leirer of Carmel, IL; and seven grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents; two sisters, Leo andToni; and a brother, Dean.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 9, 2007 at Bloomfield Church of Christ. Miller Family Funeral Home of Perryville was in charge of arrangements.

Allan Swim, Was Publicist For the CIO
Allan LaVerne Swim, 69, a retired Foreign Service officer and a former national publicity director for the old Congress of Industrial Organizations, died Thursday at Hailfax Hospital in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he had a winter home. He had cancer.
Mr. Swim was born in Illinois and grew up in Stuttgart, Ark. In 1934, he joined The Daily Arkansawyer there as editor and copublisher. He moved to Memphis, Tenn. the next year to work for The Press-Scimitar as a writer and editor.
Mr. Swim moved to Washington area in 1946 and became national publicity director of the CIO, now part of the AFL-CIO.
In 1951, he began his government career as deputy director of the Mutual Security Agency in Paris. He joined the Foreign Service in 1954. He was first assigned to Pakistan for four years and then returned to Washington briefly to work as coordinator for the National Security Council and the Operations Coordinating Board. In addition to Pakistan, his foreign assignments included Africa, South America and the Far East.
From 1964 to 1969, Mr. Swim was the chief of the publications division of the old U.S. Information Agency. He retired in 1970.
He was a resident of Bethesda and a member of the National Press Club.
His first wife, Kress Jamison, died in 1970.
Survivors include his wife, the former Eula Teel Hephcoate of Bethesda; a daughter, Sylvia L. Albritton of Casselberry, Fla.; two sisters, Kathryn Seiver of Arkansas City, Ark., and Jeanne Weir of Arkansas; two brothers, Harold, of Seattle, and Robert G., of Chicago, and one grandchild.
Source: Washington Post, The (DC) - January 7, 1981

MARY THOMPSON - ARKANSAS WOMAN BORN IN 1882 DIES.
A woman who might have been recognized as the world's oldest person if her birth certificate hadn't been lost in a house fire has died. Mary Thompson was 119, two months and six days old. Thompson, who had a taste for Crown Royal whiskey and Juicy Fruit gum, became ill Friday and died Monday at a hospital. She had lived since age 112 at Crestpark Nursing Home in DeWitt. At her 119th birthday Aug. 2, Thompson was inundated with cards, flowers and money. A British television station recorded her saying "Happy Birthday" to the Queen Mother, who turned 101 the next day, and the Wrigley Co. sent her a case of Juicy Fruit. Social Security records show that she was born on Aug. 2, 1882, in Shelby, Miss. Her parents were former slaves. Thompson lost her birth certificate in a fire about 50 years ago. The Guinness Book of Records says the document would have been necessary to certify her as the world's oldest living person. Guinness lists Maud Farris-Luse, 114, of Michigan as the oldest person in the world with documentation. Historians in Arkansas and Mississippi could not find Thompson on census rolls from the late 1800s but acknowledge records for blacks in that period are sketchy. According to Robert Landfair, the administrator of Thompson's estate, she was married twice, but her nurses say she talked about three husbands. She had no children. --Source: Associated Press Archive - October 10, 2001.