Elizabeth Adams

“Tibby” Eversole Adams, native of Hyden, died in Lexington on October 6, 2020 at the age of 98. She attended Berea College and returned to Hyden to teach elementary school during WWII while her husband, John M. Adams, Jr., served in the infantry overseas. Tibby also helped in her mother’s (“Phronia Eversole) general store in Hyden during the war years, when goods were rationed and faithful customers included nurses on horseback from the Frontier Nursing Service. FNS founder Mary Breckinridge was a friend of Mrs. Eversole and a life-long inspiration. Tibby and John were married in Whitesburg before he left to fight in Europe. This photograph is the one he carried with him during the four years they were separated. Upon his return, they lived in Cooperstown while he obtained a master’s degree in horticulture from UK. In the following years, they lived and taught school in Carlisle, Georgetown, London, and Somerset before retiring in Leixngton. They were active members and elders in Presbyterian churches wherever they lived. The only time they were ever audited by the IRS was for a year when their generous donation to the building fund of a church was so disparate to their income that it was questioned. They valued education and self-sacrifice and did not store up their treasures in this world. They were married for 59 years before John died in 2002. Tibby and John had three daughters, all of whom survive: Sherrie (Warner) Webb, Mary Lynn (Ernest, who died in 2018) Collins, and Anne (Don) Chesnut. Tibby is also survived by grandchildren Donald (Lorie) Chesnut, Chad (Heather) Collins, Camille (David) Dean, Elizabeth (Alex) Barrera, Nora Chesnut and Mary Chesnut, and by great-grandchildren Hadley, Jack and Leah Collins, Mia Dean, and Luca Barrera. In addition to teaching school, Tibby was a homemaker and beloved mother who loved piano, reading, games of all kinds, and the outdoors, and passed all of that on to her girls. She was fiercely competitive (especially at Scrabble, Aggravation, and Rook) and enjoyed fishing with John and Sunday afternoons walking through the national forest or at Cumberland Falls, Pine Mountain, Levi Jackson and other state parks. She was most intimidating to young men calling on the girls, prompting one to write after a visit to London that “you have a nice city and a very serious mother.” Indeed. Graveside services will be at Camp Nelson National Cemetery on October 9 at 9 a.m., the Rev. J.T. Silence of Hunter Presbyterian Church officiating.