Allie Ruth West Brown

Allie Ruth West Brown, 81, died Sunday, October 15, 2006 at Miss. Baptist Medical Center in Jackson after a long battle with throat and lung cancer. Visitation will be at 1 p.m. with services following at 2 p.m. today at Tutor Funeral Home chapel in Magee. Burial will be in Calvary Presbyterian Church Cemetery immediately after. Rev. Lawrence Baylot will be officiating.

Ruth, or Nana as she was frequently known after the birth of her first grandchild Katie, was the quintessential mother figure. She both nurtured and protected those she loved because she was the perfect blend of gentleness and strength. She always took up for the underdog, had a biting sense of humor, and believed in dressing your best even for the grocery store. Her heart was pure sweetness. She couldn't stand to see any animal "starve", so neighborhood dogs loved her and tended to get really fat through her benevolence. Her spirit was absolute fire. In her mid-70s, she tore a rotary cuff in her shoulder from falling out of the top of a pear tree while trying to reach the very best pears for her beloved preserves.

Family meant more to her than anything. She raised her two children. Judy and Steve, on her own for much of their adolescence. Though they didn't have much money growing up, Steve told his mother that she made them feel like they were millionaires. Ruth had three grandchildren, Katie, Stephany, and Allie, who is named after her. She helped raise them when their parents were at work, and they stayed with her frequently when they weren't. As their numbers increased from one to three, they broke her old blue rocking chair-wearing it out rocking and listening to her unique lullabies that weren't so much musical to the ear as they were to the soul.

She was, still is, and will always be beloved for many things. Whether people remember her most for their fun times together, her famous southern cooking, her sweet or her sometimes stubborn ways, I remember her most for simply being my grandmother. She was my best fiend. She was the love of my life, and loosing her is the heartbreak of my life. I take comfort in the fact that she is now in heaven with family members that she loved and missed, and God, whom she was devoted to.

She is survived by her daughter, Judy West Allen, husband Jim Allen, and daughter, Katie Allen; son, Steve West, wife Melissa West, and daughters, Stephany and Allie West of Jackson; sister, Myrtle Michelle of San Antonio, Texas.