Obituary for Clara Nell Rodgers
Clara Nell Rodgers, 75, of Russellville, Alabama, passed away Saturday, January 7, 2017, at her residence.
Ms. Rodgers had lived in Franklin County all of her life and was a member of the Baptist church.
Ms. Rodgers is survived by her children: Pamela Anette Garrison, Paula Antionette Wininger, Pattie Lee Brown, and Polly Ann Tompkins; Siblings: Vivian Nicholson, Therma DeFoor, Gwen Scott, Dean Hallman, Ed Rogers, Tony Rodgers, Joe Rodgers, Jimmy Rodgers, and Rayburn Rodgers. Other survivors include grandchildren: Kristy Thompson, Amanda Hines, Antonio Melecio and wife Kendra, Cindy Stone, Daniel Melecio, Cody Williams and wife Michelle, Samuel Melecio, Johnathon Tompkins and wife Kristin, Kyle Tompkins, Deven Tompkins, Brittany Tompkins, and Brianna Tompkins. Great grandchildren: Anilee Bailey, Adren Bailey, Adri Williams, Nate Thompson, Nicholas Williams, Collin Williams, Tanner Campbell, Brooke Campbell, Peyton Campbell, Syler Stone, Maddison Melecio, and Kendan Melecio.
She was preceded by her parents: Charles Demmit and Annie Lou Rodgers; brothers: J.W. Rodgers and Tommy Rodgers; and two grandsons: Richard Brown and Joseph Tompkins. .
There is public service planned at this time.
Pinkard Funeral Home, Russellville, Alabama, is assisting the family.
Obituary as it appeared in the Franklin County Times Newspaper

Invitation to family and friends for a processional to her sister's home to spread her ashes by police escort from her oldest daughter Pamela
" Friday, January, 13th we're meeting at Pinkards Funeral Home, highway 24, at 3.30 pm. We're talking Clara Nell Rodgers our momma on her last ride to my Aunt Dean's where we will spread her ashes. Police escort, her 4 daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren and all the family and friends that can make it are welcome to join us. "

Eulogy by granddaughter Kristy Williams January 14th, 2017
Yesterday, Friday the 13th, beneath a heavy fog and on the evening of a full moon, my mom and her sisters spread my momaw’s ashes beneath a pecan tree in the middle of a field in the country, a homecoming of sorts for a woman who’d spent her life herding cows and killing snakes, picking blackberries and mending fences.
She was as tough as nails and as hardworking as any man, although I remember when age began to catch up with her and the bruises and blood spots began to sprout after a day spent wrestling with barbed wire and tears would stain her cheeks after a day spent wrestling her spirit.
She had eleven brothers and sisters, and she ripped and ran like one of the boys with her daddy, working the farm like it was woman’s work. And it was because it was her work.
She hit the ball further than her classmates, even the boys—and was darned proud of that fact—at her tiny school in Pebble, where they still served fresh turnip greens, creamed potatoes, and fried chicken for lunch when my mom went there years later.
She ran like lightning over hills and through brush piles and thistles when a ball of light appeared chest-high in front of her one night when she was a kid and too afraid to stop for breath until she made it home.
She cursed like a sailor and spoke her mind and said her piece, and you never once wondered where you stood with her.
She mixed sausage and eggs in an electric skillet until both were cooked just right, and she ate cornflakes from an orange Tupperware bowl and cornbread and buttermilk from a fat plastic green cup. She never covered her leftovers when she put them in the fridge. (I’m not sure why I remember that.)
She pulled over to the side of the road to cut cattails from ditches when she gave it a go as a florist and used the walls of the den for hanging arrangements.
She bought tiny straw hats and brought them to life with a hot glue gun, small strings of beads, maroon lace, and little ribbons. She sat us in the dining room floor and taught us how to decorate them, too.
She sliced apples and spread them on newspapers outside so the sun could dry them out for pies.
She grew strawberries in the back yard, down by the blue truck that was to be Richard’s when he grew up, and tommy toe tomatoes between the concrete porches on the side of the old house.
She used a kerosene heater and hung sheets to keep the heat in one room.
She yanked me up and spanked my tail when my smart mouth got the better of me and I decided to tempt fate. I knew better.
She planted snowball and azalea bushes by the sidewalk in the front yard but had a load of sand dumped in the side yard where cars parked and told us grandkids that we could use it as a sandbox.
She kept the front door propped open, sun or rain, summer or winter, and she kept herself propped back in a chair with her house-shoe-clad feet on the bottom rung or on the railing of the porch.
She slept with one of those green eggshell mattresses on her bed, and she told me to be still every time I spent the night and budged an inch after she said she was tired.
She carried me across the street to the Church of God where my Baptist-raised-self watched her close her eyes, lift her arms, and sing and sway while worshipping. She never left with dry eyes.
She littered her kitchen table, even the one on the front porch, with fly swatters, butter bowls of randomness, coffee tins of pecans, ketchup and Dr Pepper bottles, notebooks with pens pushed down into the wire, and word search books with half the puzzles solved. She was good at those.
She drove too fast on the straight, flat patches of roads and then had to hit the brakes and cuss a little when she went around curves or downhill.
She loved the kinds of dogs that no one else wanted, and each one she had would have died for her. Somehow, she also made friends with the wild animals that came up in the yard, like the coyote she started feeding from the porch. They never seemed to care that she was human.
She knew the name of every type of tree on her land and always peeked beneath fallen logs for the cities of insects and anything else that might be hidden there.
She hiked through the woods, up and down hills, and over rocks that stuck up out of the creek beds, always carrying a big stick or a hoe or a shovel. She knew which way was home.
She fired at a half gallon of water 50-60 yards away and then put the pistol in my hand and asked me to do the same. I hit the jug the first time I fired, so she went in the house after a bigger gun.
She swept up her hair with bobby pins so she could work without getting too hot. She was never afraid of work, and there was nothing she couldn’t do.
She wondered aloud about local legends during Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet, but she worried about everyone everywhere when she turned the TV to The Weather Channel.
She read the books my kids loved and then passed her way, and she always sent them home with something in return. She bought my younger son for $6 when his siblings were trying to give him away. They still ask why I never left him when we’d visit.
She chose cantaloupe over cake for her 72nd birthday party, and she snacked on Crunch-N-Munch, Cheerios, oranges, and grapes like nobody’s business. She loved Jack’s chicken fingers and strawberry milkshakes. She didn’t too much care for candy.
She told me stories about growing up and living life and swore she’d write those stories down. In case she remembered something, she kept a notebook on the coffee table in the living room of the apartment that was all concrete and no grass and nothing like her.
She told us a long time ago that she wasn’t afraid of dying. I wondered then why she was telling us that when we all knew she wasn’t afraid of anything. Now I wonder if she was just as afraid as anyone else.
She let us know she wanted to go when it was her time and the good Lord called her home. No bells and whistles and machines and things to hold her here when here was no longer where she belonged. No satin-lined box beneath the ground to keep her from returning to the earth that she had plowed and planted and plodded.
She told me ghost stories when I was small and scared of the dark and had my mom telling me ghosts weren’t real so I could sleep at night. She was that way. I whispered to her last week that when she was on the other side, and if ghosts were real, she better keep in touch. My little cousin told her he hoped she liked Heaven.
She couldn’t speak the last time I spoke to her.
I whispered in her ear, “I love you, Clara Nell.” Every time I’ve said those words to her, all these years as her namesake, I’ve received the same reply: “I love you, too, my Kristy Nell.” So I just closed my eyes and remembered…