Frances Opal Smith Waggoner

Graveside services for former Gladewater resident, Frances Opal Smith Waggoner will be held Friday, July 27, 2018, at the Gladewater Memorial Park under the direction of Croley Funeral Home. The family will receive friends Thursday evening from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. at Croley Funeral Home in Gladewater. Mrs. Waggoner passed away on July 19, 2018 in Gladewater.

Frances was born in Tulsa Oklahoma on April 8, 1922, to Emma Sanders Kenton and Foy Olen Smith. She was the eldest of three children. Frances and her family moved to Gladewater in her senior year due to her father’s work. She graduated from Gladewater High School in 1940. She met and married Finis G. Waggoner in 1941, and they lived in San Diego until he was called to WWII. From there, they moved to New Orleans where their daughter Sharon (Sherry) was born. When he returned from Germany, Sherry was 3-1/2. They then moved to Gladewater where Frances became secretary at the First State Bank to presidents, Paul Rounsaville and later, Quentin Abernathy. Before she retired, she was secretary to Jo Loyd, vice president of Texas Bank & Trust in Longview.
Even though her husband was a Ford dealer in the late 1950s-early 1960s, Frances drove a 1941 Chevrolet coupe with a visor over the windshield. She and Sherry took several trips in that old car to Galveston, Tulsa, and New Orleans. On hot days, she would purchase a block of ice from the Ice House in Gladewater and put it in the floor board on Sherry’s side so the vent air would blow on it to cool off the car. Her devotion in Gladewater was to her beloved sorority Epsilon Sigma Alpha and her lady friends in the organization. They often met in her home and did a lot of good deeds for Gladewater. Frances was also an avid genealogist — having traced her family tree back to Prussia on her father’s side and Scotland/England on her mother’s side. She found she was also kin to Simon Kenton, famous Indian fighter and trailblazer and best friend of Daniel Boone, whose life he saved several times.

Frances will be remembered as a lovely, intelligent, talented, and witty lady. She was one of the group who formed the Gladewater Former Students’ Association and was its secretary for many years. She had many friends in Gladewater and was always available and willing to help out those in need.

Frances is survived by her daughter, Sharon (Sherry) Waggoner Beall and Bill Hewitt, a granddaughter, Diane Beall McKnight, and her husband Joel, and two great- grandsons, Jonathan and Joshua. She was predeceased by her parents, Emma and Foy Smith, Finis G. Waggoner, and her two brothers, James Harold Smith and Fred Olen Smith.

Many thanks to the nurses and staff at Legend Oaks Nursing Facility in Gladewater and to Longview Regional Hospital and its nurses and staff for their excellent care of Frances before, during and after the fall that broke her hip.

Donations, if you so choose, may be made to Gladewater 'Former Students Association, Legend Oaks in Gladewater, or to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.