Jessie Talley Sample

Verona - Jessie Mable Talley Sample, 98, transitioned from this world to the next on April 17, 2010, at Sanctuary Hospice in Tupelo after a long and fruitful life.
Services will be at 11 a.m., Tuesday, April 20, at W. E. Pegues Funeral Home, 535 Jefferson St. in Tupelo with the Rev. Richard Robbins officiating. Visitation will be from 5-7 p.m. on Monday, April 19, at the funeral home.
She was born on August 29, 1911, in Lee County to Jess Monroe Talley and Jodie Elizabeth Estes Talley. The family moved to Verona so that Jessie and her older brother and sister could attend school there. She graduated from Verona High School as salutatorian in 1929 and then took courses at Miss Wileys Business College in Memphis, Tennessee.
Back home she joined her sister Annie Lou in the office of Reed Manufacturing Company in Tupelo and worked there for fifty-nine years. Good with numbers, she served as Reed Manufacturings bookkeeper. Other books she kept through the years include Rex Reeds dairy, the Kid Company, Skeet Hills Gun Shop in Verona, Cottonrow Bookstore in Cleveland, MS, and Dorothy Shawhans checkbook.
She was introduced to George Vay Sample by his sister and her friend Margaret Sample at the fair in Tupelo where the couple saw the stage show and remembered thereafter the song A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody as their own.
Jessie and George Vay were married on October 15, 1938, in Oxford, Mississippi, in the Stark Young home which at the time was the Presbyterian manse of the Rev. and Mrs. Wallace, family friends.
The couple made their home in Verona for the next forty-nine years and raised their two daughters there. They became life-long Methodists. Jessie taught the Be-Square Sunday School class and was an active member of the United Methodist Women. Their home was one full of laughter, good stories, and good food.
With George Vays death in 1987, Jessie moved to Cleveland, Mississippi, to be near their two daughters and grandchildren. She participated in the First United Methodist Church of Cleveland and volunteered with Helping Hands and Habitat for Humanity. She spent a great deal of time chauffeuring and mentoring her grandchildren.
In 2002, she moved to the Waterford Retirement Home in Jackson. In 2006, she celebrated her 95th birthday with a big party in the home of her daughter Margaret Anne.
Known for the best fried chicken on the planet, she pulled her walker up to the stove at her grandson Georges house in Baton Rouge when she was 96 and taught him the secret.
She moved to the Traceway Retirement Community in Tupelo in 2008.
Preceding her in death were her parents, her husband George Vay, her sister Annie Lou Hill, her brother Amos Talley, and her nephew R.L. (Skeet) Hill.
She is survived by her daughters Dorothy Shawhan of Cleveland and Margaret Anne Robbins (Jimmy) of Pontotoc; three grandchildren, George Shawhan (Anne), Ned Mitchell (Mary Beth), and Jessica Mitchell Bendele (Marvin); two great grandchildren, Madeleine Shawhan and David Mitchell, and several nieces and nephews.
Pall bearers are Bucky Brooks, Huston Lilly, Tom Lilly, Ken Sample, Bud Talley, Charles Talley, John Tatum and Jim Tims.
Memorial donations can be made to the Verona United Methodist Church, P.O. Box 370, Verona, MS 38879, or to the Baddour Center, 3297 U.S 51, Senatobia, MS. 38668.