Margaret Burrell

Margaret Ann Kern Burrell, 93, passed away peacefully surrounded by family in the home of her youngest daughter, Nancy Carol Burrell Thompson, the morning of December 29, 2024.
Funeral services are 1:00 pm Thursday, January 2, 2025 at First Baptist Church of Durant. Visitation will be 11:00 am until 1:00 pm prior to the service at the FBC. Burial will follow at Sallis Cemetery.
She was a mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, friend, teacher, and above all else, a joyful and steadfast servant of the Lord.
Margaret was born on December 12, 1931, in Canton, MS, to Raymond Kern and Mattie C. Wright Kern. She was the second oldest of their three children (brother Julian Kern, and sister Patsy Kern Mauldin) who she is preceded in death by.
She attended Clark College in Newton, MS, for two years, followed by two more years at Mississippi College where she graduated in 1953 with a bachelor's degree in Math Education.
In 1956, she married Maxie Lee Burrell of Durant, MS. She became the mother to three children whom she each loved dearly, Barbara Ann Burrell, Maxie Lee Burrell, Jr., and Nancy Carol Burrell Thompson.
Her first year of teaching was completed at Pearl High School from 1954-55. The following 19 years she spent teaching middle and high school Math at Durant Public School. In 1978, she transitioned into the position of church secretary at Durant Baptist Church where she would serve for the next 19 years until her retirement in 1997.
Her position as an educator and as a secretary held greater weight than the two titles alone. While she worked as a teacher, she served as a friend. While she worked as a secretary, she served as a Sunday school teacher and a substitute pianist. The impression that she made in her service reveals the true impact of her life that her community feels today and will cherish forever.
She will be remembered most for how she loved her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and how His love showed itself so evidently in Margaret's life and relationships with her family and friends. She was a fervent prayer warrior, and an angel on Earth, radiant always in love and kindness for others.
May her kindness continue to echo within this world through the people that she touched.
She is preceded in death also by her parents, Raymond Kern and Mattie C. Wright Kern, her husband, Maxie Lee Burrell, and her son, Maxie Lee Burrell, Jr.
She is survived in death by her two daughters, Barbara Ann Burrell and Nancy Carol Burrell Thompson, son-in-law, John Hunter Thompson, and granddaughter, Julie Ann Thompson.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to First Baptist Church of Durant.