| Thompson, Clara Rice 218340 |
| Birth: 04/13/1886 Death: 04/02/1961 Marriage: 06/21/1911 |
| Cemetery: Evergreen (06-38-03) |
| Record Source: Headstone, Texas Death Certificate, The Paris News |
|
See Image Thompson, Clara Rice
Update info |
|
If you copy this information, please cite this as your source: Betsy Mills and Ron Brothers. The Death and Cemetery Records of Lamar County, Texas, ReBroMa Press, 2008, http://www.lamarcountytx.org/cemetery. (05/12/2025) |
| Notes THE PARIS NEWS, 2 Apr 1961: “Mrs. Troy C. Thompson, the former Miss Clara Rice, known to all Paris by her school day nickname of ‘Suggee,’ died Sunday at 7:20 a.m. at the Sanitarium of Paris. A musician and teacher of music, she was identified with almost every field of musical endeavor here for most of her life. She lived at 308 W. Washington St., and maintained her studio at 114 Lamar Ave. The funeral, Tuesday at 11 a.m., will be conducted at Fry and Gibbs Funeral Home, where the choir of First Methodist Church, of which she was director, will sit in a body. The pastor, the Rev. John Shuler, will officiate, and interment will be made in Evergreen Cemetery by the side of Mrs. Thompson’s husband, who died in 1923. She leaves no immediate relatives, other than two sisters-in-law, Mrs. Arthur Stalls, Deport, and Mrs. I.F. Welch, Sherman, though these longtime friends and musical associates have comprised her household a number of years; Miss Bee Gramley, Richard Parker, Miss Addie Davidge, Miss Jennie Guthrie and Miss Thelma Walker, the latter and Mr. Parker also being connected with her studio. Daughter of the late Walter A. and Clara (Holland) Rice, Mrs. Thompson was born in Paris, 13 Apr 1886, and was married here 21 Jun 1911, to Troy Thompson, son of the late Col.and Mrs. Dee Thompson, from whom the town of Deport takes its name. She attended J.G. Wooten School (then Second Ward) and Paris High School, and subsequently Kidd-Key College at Sherman; St. Louis Institute of Music, and Washington University in St. Louis, and Southern Methodist University, studying under Harold Von Mickwitz, Harry R. Detweiler, Dr. Francis Moore and Helen Worswick Ross. As told in a ’This is Your LIfe; program at a community reception in her honor at First Methodist Church in 1949, she made her first real public appearance as a pianist at the age of 11 at the opening of the new YMCA building in Paris. On her return from Kidd-Key she became organist of Cumberland (now Central) Presbyterian Church when the late Dr. Charles Manton was pastor, later serving First Baptist Church and becoming musical director of First Methodist Church (then Centenary) in 1916. She played at innumerable weddings, funerals and other occasions during the years, besides organizing and directing the Melody Boys and Musical Man choruses in 1935, the Sanitarium of Paris nurses school glee club, and the Paris Junior College Choral Club, which she directed from 1936 until last year. She had been a member of the old Etude Club for music study; a member of the Paris Music Study Club and honorary member of the Lions Club for which she was musical director, and devoted much time during World War II to musical entertainment of Camp Maxey’s personnel. She had continued private instruction classes until fracturing her hip in a fall last 7 Dec at the Methodist Church.” Information from Texas Death Certificate: Buried next to Troy C. Thompson. |