Elizabeth Hancock

Elizabeth Hancock

December 17, 1922—September 27, 2020

Elizabeth Hancock died peacefully in her sleep Sunday morning, September 27, 2020, in her beloved home in the Kingtown community in southeast Nacogdoches County.

Below her house, the waters of Sam Rayburn Reservoir shimmered quietly through a stand of oaks, dogwoods, and redbuds. Her precious day lilies—one here, another there— spilled from the trees and across her lawn. Though weakened by the absence of the tender hand of their gardener, they bloomed one last time, defying the end of summer.

She was 97.

Elizabeth Hancock was born December 17, 1922, the second child of D.L. Hancock and Rosa Belle Peterson Hancock. They farmed in the Cedar Bluff community south of Garrison. She and older brother John D. Hancock (1921) were best pals. When he started first grade at Cedar Bluff School, she was so lonesome without him that she started walking to and from school with him each day. Elizabeth’s sister Virginia Belle Hancock (who later married Roby Lee) was born in 1926 and sister Betty Lou Hancock (who later married John Aiken), in 1936.

After graduating from Garrison High School in 1940, Elizabeth attended Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College until 1943. To make ends meet, she hauled ten-gallon milk cans from local dairies to a Nacogdoches milk plant and worked as a telephone operator.

In 1943, much against the wishes of her parents, she migrated to Orange and found office work in the engineering department of Consolidated Western Steel Corp. The company shipyard built destroyers and other naval vessels for World War II. She regretted not joining other young women on the construction crews. “Rosie the Riveter made more money than the rest of us,” she said.

In 1946, she married returning military veteran Ray Vardaman. They lived in Freeport, Texas. She did office work in the engineering department of Dow Chemical Co. He ran a service station.

In 1957, she moved to Houston. Using her engineering office experience and skills in layout, typesetting, and printing, she found work with several companies, including Entex. From 1968 to 1976, she operated her own business, B&E Cold-Type Services.

In 1987 she moved into her Kingtown home. She loved overnight visitors. When they arrived, she issued saws, axes, hatchets, shovels, hoes, and branch loppers. She expected guests to help clear and plant the property; to shell and can peas, put up tomatoes and cucumbers, and preserve pears; and to chase gophers, skunks, and other critters off the property.

One year after moving to Kingtown, she joined the USDA Forestry Service in Lufkin and worked in the engineering section. Hers was a one-year job for senior citizens that lasted eighteen years. She retired in 2002 at age 80. “I did whatever they asked me to do,” she once said. “If they had asked me to go out in the pasture and pick up cow chips, I would have done it.”

Elizabeth Hancock dressed for style, bought stylish furniture, and drove cars with more style than sense, among them a classic Studebaker Hawk and a big maroon Cadillac DeVille. Even as a young woman with a truckload of milk cans, she wore dresses, heels, and makeup. Chivalrous men at the milk plant unloaded the cans for her.

She did not read her Bible; she studied her Bible, always the Lord’s very own King James Version. She wore her Bibles out, one after another, leaving broken spines, loose pages, passages underlined in red on every page, and elaborate handwritten notes and lists: Jacob’s children, the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, the Ten Commandments, the good kings and the bad kings of Israel and Judah.

Besides her family, her greatest joy was her Kingtown home, a country house surrounded by trees and a vast lawn. She made it into a garden showcase and hosted family gatherings with elaborate meals cooked with the old recipes. It was a happy place. Children knew where to find toys and an endless supply of candy, far more than their mothers ever allowed at home. It was there she lived, there she clung in her last days, and there she died.

She is survived by nephew Darrell Hancock and wife Diana of Kingwood, Texas; nephew Danny Hancock and wife Glennette of Lonoke, Arkansas; nephew Michael R. Lee and wife Vionette of Allen, Texas; and niece Angela Aiken Weems and husband Scott Weems of the Cedar Bluff community. She is also survived by many great- and grand-nieces and -nephews, by other relatives from the old Hancock and Peterson clans, and by many friends.

Her full name was Mary Elizabeth Hancock.

Oh, and she survived falling at the Natchitoches Christmas Festival of Lights and breaking her left thigh bone, being run over by her own Cadillac, and being bitten by a copperhead.

Donations in Elizabeth Hancock’s memory may be made to Kingtown Volunteer Fire Department, 3226 County Road 552, Nacogdoches, Texas 75961, which she helped organize and always supported. While others enjoyed fish at KVFD fund-raisers, she shared deep-fried raccoon with the firefighters.

Her last church home was Macedonia Baptist Church, 16789 FM 226, Etoile, Texas 75944, though for many years she was too ill to attend.

Private Services will be held at a later date.

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