Sarah Lee Mcknight

Sarah Lee Owen Williams McKnight was born on February 26, 1929. She died at the Flo and Phil Jones Hospice House after a brief illness on September 29, 2024. Sarah Lee grew up in the small Sulphur Rock community in Independence County, Arkansas. She was the daughter of John Morgan and Lena Vaughn Owen. After graduating from Sulphur Rock High School, she attended Arkansas Tech and graduated with a degree in Education.

Her first teaching job was in Holly Grove, Arkansas where she taught English and Business classes. There she met V. W. Williams whom she later married in 1956. They made their home in Monroe, Arkansas where they welcomed their daughter, Sarah Katherine Williams, in 1958. Her husband brought two children to this marriage, Dianne and Vernon Wayne Williams. After losing her first husband, Sarah later married Robert Ed McKnight of Brinkley who had two daughters, Anne Louise and Laura Jean.

Sarah was an avid bridge player. This game brought her many friends through the years and helped keep her mind and memory sharp. She also enjoyed golfing, quilting, sewing, painting, watching Downton Abbey, and making her family laugh. Sarah was a lover of animals and enjoyed the company of Evie and Pippa in her later years. "SaySay" also helped care for her great grandchildren well into her eighties.

She is survived by her daughter, Kathy Frein and husband, Carl of Brinkley; grandchildren, Kathryn Dooley and husband Josh, Anthony Frein and wife Ashley, and Anna Paige Umhoefer and husband Greg of Jonesboro; stepdaughters, Anne Johnson of North Little Rock and Laura Jean Lee and husband Richard of Houston, TX; step grandchildren, Kristen Adcock of Cabot, AR, Carrie Burkhalter of Humble, TX, Michael Langley of Little Rock, AR, and Laura Langley of Parish, FL; and many great grandchildren.

She is preceded in death by her parents, husbands V.W. and Robert Ed, her stepchildren Dianne and Vernon Wayne Williams, her step granddaughter Bethany Valachovic, and great grandson Gabriel Umhoefer.

Visitation will be held Friday, October 4, 2024 starting at 9:30 a.m. with the Memorial Service to follow at 10:30 a.m. held at Emerson Memorial Chapel. Burial will be private.

Memorials may be sent to the Central Delta Historical Society, 100 W. Cypress St., Brinkley, AR, 72021.

Mom's Tribute

I want to thank all of you for coming today to remember my mother. At 95, there aren’t many Brinkley
friends of her generation left, so it falls on her new Jonesboro friends and our friends to come and
memorialize her and we do appreciate you being here.
Sarah Lee Owen Williams McKnight was born on February 26, 1929, to John Morgan and Lena Vaughn
Owen of Sulphur Rock, Arkansas. She was their only child. John Owen was an artist and political
cartoonist. The story goes that he was once offered a job with a newspaper in Memphis, but my
grandmother refused to move there with him. Unfortunately, I never knew my maternal grandfather,
but it does make me sad that he didn’t get to realize his dreams because my grandmother, who was a
homemaker, never wanted to leave home and her extended family there in Independence County to
move to Memphis.
Like I said, Mom grew up in the small community of Sulphur Rock which was about 10 miles outside of
Batesville. The homes she grew up in had no indoor plumbing, no electricity and therefore no central
heat and air. Their meals were prepared on wood stoves. When they were hot from the heat of the day,
they would use a funeral home fan to cool down, put another log in the stove to warm up in the winter,
and end the day on the front porch on hot summer nights or around the stove when it was chilly
outside. She fell asleep on thick downy feather beds and pillows that had been made by the women in
her family and drank fresh milk from the cows in the barn behind the house.
Her daily chores included gathering eggs from the chicken house, bringing in fire wood for the wood
stove, and drawing up and bringing in buckets of fresh water from the backyard well to the back porch.
She walked to school, waded in the creek near her home, played marbles and jacks with her school
friends, rode horses and mules with her cousins, and picked a little bit of cotton on the family farm as
she got older.
When mom was about 15, her father was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Doctors sent him to the state TB
Sanatorium in Booneville, Arkansas, where he lived until his death two years later. My grandmother
went with him and became an LPN by working at the facility and was granted a nursing license by the
state for this work. This was a blessing because my grandmother was then able to support herself and
my mother by working at Grey’s Hospital in Batesville after my grandfather’s death.
During the time that my grandparents were away, my mother lived with her great aunt and uncle, Lizzie
and Sam Bevens in Sulphur Rock. MamMam and Uncle Sam were older and had no children of their own
but they were raising two nephews who had lost their mother in childbirth. These two boys, Ed and
Jimmy Moore, were like brothers to my mother and they remained close all through life. As a little girl, I
can remember hearing Ed call my mother “Sister” as a term of affection.
Mom fondly recalled her time at Arkansas Tech College where she went after high school. She studied
English and business education and thoroughly enjoyed all the friends she made there. Many were the
WWII veterans who returned from war to go to college on the GI bill. Those were the boys with cars who
made life fun and exciting for those innocent young girls attending Tech from rural Arkansas. They
listened to Big Band music and danced the Jitterbug to the same. She lived in Parker Hall, which was the
rival to Caraway Hall, and attended dances wearing corsages and long formal gowns that my
grandmother paid out over time. To class she wore saddle oxfords, skirts and sweater sets and dresses
purchased from Fitzhugh’s Department Store in downtown Batesville. At one point, mom was chosen as
Miss Apple Blossom in Russellville. I have a picture of her riding in a parade with her long black hair

tossed in the breeze as she smiled and waved at the crowds. She kept in touch with many of those
college friends through life and visited with many of them in their homes all over the country.
In 1951 Mom took her first teaching job in Holly Grove, Arkansas. She loved this community that was so
quaint and supportive of their teachers and their school system. She taught there for 5 years and while
there she met my father, V.W. Williams, at a local café. They began to date in the mid 1950’s. I loved
hearing the stories of their dates to the Ice Capades in Little Rock, Broadway shows at the Orpheum in
Memphis, and lazy Saturdays at the cabin on East Lake south of Holly Grove. They were married in June
of 1956 and made their home in Monroe, Arkansas. According to my birth certificate, my father was a
rice farmer, a merchant and a cotton ginner and my mother was a homemaker. Our lives revolved
around our farm and mercantile store, the church, the gin and home. They made Christmas morning
special, served pink lemonade and homemade vanilla ice cream at family reunions on the 4 th of July, and
prepared the traditional turkey and dressing at Thanksgiving. They spread newspapers on our kitchen
table and served ice cold sliced watermelon to our church family after Training Union on Sunday nights
in the summer. We road to the farm after dark on hot July nights hoping the distant rumble of thunder
and small flash of lightening would bring rain that would end the drought for that year’s crop. They let
me play in the cotton wagons that lined up at our gin and watch as the cotton bolls were cleaned of
their seeds and pressed in to huge burlap bales and hauled off to the compress. We ate fried chicken
from Sarah’s kitchen, drank cold dime cokes with peanuts from the coke box at the store and attended
church whenever the doors were open. Our life was typical of a small ordinary dusty Delta town and it
was beautiful. I am thankful for many things in my life, but especially the early years and the fact that
God gave me parents who loved me and provided a warm, safe, and secure home for me to grow up in.
Upon reflecting on losing my mother, I realize now that I have lost the two people on this earth who I
knew would always love me. Sadly, I lost my daddy when I was 14.
She was my first playmate. As her only child, I often complained that I was lonely at times so she did her
best to play games of Monopoly and Yahtzee with me, teach me to sew, allowed me to have a
menagerie of stray cats and dogs, myna birds, turtles, baby chicks and bunnies at Easter and most
incredibly…a baby deer that we fed with a bottle. She helped me with crafting, let me explore the
outdoors and play to my heart’s content. She let me go barefoot and would nurse the stings when I
would inevitably step on a bee. She taught me to ride a bicycle and washed the gravel from wounds
when I tumbled and fell to my knees every summer. She called out spelling words and multiplications
tables to me and encouraged me in my schoolwork.
She’s the reason I learned to play the piano, sang in the church choir, studied and made good grades,
was active in Girl Scouts, went to college, studied a second language and learned to work with my
hands. Sarah Lee taught me to love the color green, wilted lettuce, fried okra and fresh sliced tomatoes,
puppies and kittens, and so many, many other things.
During mom’s life, other children came along. When they married, my father had a daughter, Diane
Williams Langley, and a son, Vernon Wayne Williams. Later, after my father’s death, when mom married
Robert Ed McKnight, two more daughters were added to our family, Laura Jean McKnight Lee and Anne
Louise McKnight Johnson. I think she welcomed these young people into her life and enjoyed them as
family. Grandchildren came soon after and I know she cared for all of them as her own as any loving
grandmother would.

Mom lived a full life. Who can mourn long over a well lived life of 95 years? She was an avid bridge
player, golfer, painter, crafter and cook. Thankfully I have her recipe file that holds some of our family’s
favorites- cinnamon candied apples, $100 Rum Cake, and sweet and sour green beans...I think you can
see a pattern with the food and our family here. She tried to teach me but I never could embrace the
concept of bridge, which was the game that contributed to mom’s long life of great mental acuity and
good memory. Through bridge she made many new friends after her move to Jonesboro. I knew this
would happen because that generation enjoyed the many benefits of coming together for a little
competition, socializing, and fun. They didn’t rely on their cell phones for entertainment and were
better for it. Mom tried to do her part in teaching others the joy of bridge even after she moved to St.
Bernard’s Village so the game would go on
She was involved during her life and contributed to her church and community. Her roles as Sunday
School teacher, choir director, church treasurer, poll worker, PTA member, tutor for the Literacy Council
and fun mother and grandmother were examples to me and I hope my children have seen me
contribute to life in our communities like she did.
I thank all of you for coming today to remember my mother. So many have asked about her through the
years. She was loved and respected and appreciated by many and I am thankful for that just as I am
thankful to God for giving me the mother He did. My mother was never critical of me joining the
Catholic church after I married Carl. She supported us as we raised our children in the faith and
attended many baptisms, first communions, confirmations, and weddings. So it seems fitting today to
close with a prayer from our church for my mother as well.

So I will now ask you to please stand and bow your heads as we pray…Our Father…

Eternal rest grant unto Sarah, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and the souls
of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.