Martha Gray Love

Martha Gray Love, 70, died Wednesday, November 29, 2006, at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Funeral services were held Friday, December 1, 2006, at Freeman Funeral Home in Waynesboro with burial in Waynesboro City Cemetery.

Love, a native of Waynesboro and a 1969 graduate of the Jackson School of Law, was born April 17, 1936, and was the youngest of three children. She had been active in the community for many years most recently serving as president of the historic Hebron Cemetery Association and president of the Waynesboro Home and Garden civic organization.

She attended Waynesboro High School and graduated in 1953 before moving on to post-secondary studies at Belhaven College, from which she completed her undergraduate work.

In addition to her years in private law practice, she was a member of the county and state bar associations and had been serving as Wayne County Attorney since her election to that office in August 2003. In years past Love had also served on the municipal courts of Waynesboro, State Line and Shubuta in various capacities, including judge.

Love also worked for many years in the oil and gas business in Mississippi, Alabama and across the South.

She also played a role in keeping alive the historic significance of Wayne County's Gray Family Cemetery, which is the final resting place of Clinch Gray, who was a signer of Mississippi's first constitution in 1817- and a distant relative of Love.

She is survived by two sons, Jim (Paula) Riley and Glenn Riley of Waynesboro; two daughters, Donna (Rusty) Crane of Buckatunna and Becky (Richard) Burkes of Philadelphia; a brother, Charles H. Gray of Bay St. Louis; a sister, May Alice (Dan) Lee of Jackson; five grandchildren, Jason Riley, Jared and Chaz Crane, Mollie and Blake Burkes; and two great-grandchildren, Colby and Makenzie Riley.