Services for Gladys Jean Coleman, of Summit, were held onWednesday, May 5, at Hartman-Sharkey Funeral Home in McComb, withburial in Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Bogue Chitto. The Rev. MikeMorris officiated.

Mrs. Coleman, 86, died May 1, 2010, at the Mississippi StateVeterans Home in Jackson. She was the first conceived ofsuperfetated twin girls born at home in Arkansas on Sept. 25, 1923,to Clifton Curtis Burns and Annie Elizabeth Bacot Burns.

After living in various places, the family of nine settled in thePleasant Hill/Ruth area of Mississippi, where her father didvarious jobs for a local prominent community member, Clifton C.Clark. Sharecropping was one of those activities in which the wholefamily contributed. Breaking for a lunch of a cold biscuit andsliced onion sandwich during a long day of hoeing the cotton wasone of the childhood memories Gladys often recalled.

When the United States joined the World War II in 1941, Gladys waseager to join the cause, first as a welder in the PascagoulaShipyards, then as a member of the Women’s Army Corps. Trained as amedical technician, she worked at O’Reilly General Hospital inSpringfield, Mo., helping the boys wounded in battle to recover.This is where she met her future husband, Homer, who passed onlythree months ago.

They spent almost 64 years together, farming their little plot andrearing three children. Gladys was also active with the church,Tangipahoa Baptist in Amite County, for many years, along withsewing most of her own clothes and caring for her flowers. Soabundant were those flowers, that there are many people in theseparts and even other states who have benefited from hergenerosity.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband; and herbrothers, the Rev. Edwin Burns of Brookhaven, and Lowery Burns andCurtis Burns of Ruth.

She is survived by her son, Jack Coleman, of Summit; her daughterand son-in-law, Terry and Fred Killingsworth, of Summit; her sonand daughter-in-law Michael and Carol Coleman of Palestine, Texas;her granddaughters, Brenda Coleman, Mary Elizabeth Light and KendraMcCann, all of Palestine, Krista Melton, of Texarkana, Ark., andMika Eberhart, of McComb; her sisters, Julia Burns, of Clinton, AnnBayly, of Pocahontas, and Grace Meacham of Suffolk, Va.; andnumerous great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other familymembers.

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