Bernice Sneed

On December 5, 1925, Bernice Dry Sneed was delivered by her father Homer Travis Dry in their home at Arvada, Texas and placed into the arms of her 19-year-old mother, Gracie Dry. As their second-born, she was raised like a twin to her slightly older sister, Beatrice.

In fact, Bernice spent every waking hour trying to be just like Beatrice—especially in their one-room school house in nearby Bugtussel, near Ladonia. Proudly, by second grade, she was granted a double promotion that allowed the two girls to study side by side.

Sadly, this did not last. For only days after the two healthy girls sang a duet for their school Christmas program, Beatrice got sick and soon died of diphtheria. It was 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, making it a double tragedy from which Bernice never fully recovered.

Still, she more than survived.

At only sixteen, as Bernice was finishing her last year at Ladonia High School, a man nobody in the family had ever met showed up on the farm where the entire family was working one afternoon. Somehow, he'd seen her grades and was convinced she needed to let him enroll her in Dallas Business School. Her father agreed, and was even willing to co-sign a loan to make this happen. Reluctantly, despite her mother's understandable, tearful objections, the young girl willingly took the risk.

To her, it offered a chance to get out of the cotton patch, where the four little girls had pulled bolls until their hands bled from the time they could walk.

In the second half of business school, with excellent skills, it soon became evident that she could not work enough to pay off student loans. The cotton patch was the only answer, her father insisted. Not so, she told him. Never would she go back!

Against his angry protests, she abandoned her educational goals, but got a full-time job where she could continue improving her skills that she would later use to help support her own young family.

Before passing from earth on September 2, 2023, she was preceded in death by her parents, her youngest sister, Myrtle Ray Edwards, and her husband, known around Bonham as Brother R. H. Sneed until his untimely death in 1985.

In 1979, after retiring from full-time ministry and coming with Bernice to reside in Bonham, to help care for his father-in-law, R. H. remained in part-time ministries, owned Sneed's Clock Shop, and became an award-winning insurance salesman. Proudly, the two were able to travel during those few short years before cancer eventually took Sneed's life at 62.

Bernice's survivors include Bernice's one sister, Jo Ann Bailey of Dallas, two daughters, Delinda Ann Miller of Lawrence, Kansas and Lydia Christine Jones of Morris, Oklahoma, and one son, Timothy Carl Sneed of Bonham.

Other offspring include nine nieces and nephews, six grandchildren, nineteen great-grandchildren, and six great-great grandchildren. In lieu of flowers please consider donating to Malawi Children's Village -  https://malawichildrensvillage.org/blog/. 

Please join the family for the service on Sunday, September 10, 2023 at Boyd Baptist Church, 2pm with visitation the night before from 6pm to 8pm at Wise Funeral Home.