Vera Jo Breeding

Vera Jo Sawyers Breeding died on Friday, February 13, 2026, at St. Bernard’s Medical Center in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Her death came after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease and its accompanying side-effects. She died seven months to-the-day before what would have been her eighty-eighth birthday.

She was born on September 13, 1938 - a Tuesday - in the no-longer-existent Lawrence County, Arkansas, community of Whittaker, a small farming hamlet which played an oversized role in her life. She was born in the family home to her parents, Willie Swayze Sawyers and Myrl Goodwin Sawyers. She grew up on a cotton farm, playing in the fields and woods, sometimes reluctantly interacting with the German POWs who worked her father’s land, and attending the one-room Whittaker School before matriculating to the upper grades in nearby Hoxie, Arkansas. The summer before her freshman year, her father became the manager of the dairy barn at Arkansas State College; consequently, she attended Jonesboro Senior High School, where she graduated in 1956. She was honored with a full-page portrait in her class’s yearbook as the recipient of the “Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizenship Award.”

She attended Arkansas State College in Jonesboro, and was an active member of Central Baptist Church in Jonesboro where she met a young student who was serving in the National Guard and who had just been honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. He was Henry Louis Breeding of Clarendon. They were married on September 4, 1959, at Central Baptist Church.

While a college student, she taught in the Cash, Arkansas, schools. After earning her Bachelor of Science in Education, Vera and Henry moved to Pocahontas, where she taught in the elementary school. In 1965, they moved to Keys, California, and the next year, to Newman, California, where they remained until 1978. While living in California, Vera taught - every year but one, when she worked in the schools at Hilmar, California - in the Newman-Crow’s Landing Unified School District. She taught several grades at both Bonita School and Von Renner Elementary School. She even taught her daughter in the first grade. The family were active members at First Baptist Church in Newman, where Vera immensely enjoyed serving in the choir. The couple were the first on the list to sign up for "progressive suppers," welcoming the church family into their home to break bread and fellowship.

In 1978, the family moved back to Northeast Arkansas, where she returned to her education and earned a Master of Science in Education from Arkansas State University. She taught for several years in the Brookland, Arkansas, schools. She spent the last two decades of her career as the Early Childhood/Special Education Program Coordinator at the Crowley’s Ridge Educational Cooperative in Harrisburg, Arkansas. She was the first person to hold the position, and she built the program into a model for the rest of the state. She spoke up for and fought for "her students and their families." She was especially proud of her work with U.S. Representative Bill Alexander and Arkansas First Lady Hillary Clinton. When she retired, she had nurtured, taught, and loved young children for half a decade. During almost all of the years back in Arkansas, Henry and Vera lived in Lake City.

As important as teaching was to her, she lived a full life outside of her career. From a young age, she learned to sew, and spent almost all of her adult life making her own clothes, and then, later, clothes for her daughter and her daughter-in-law; she also created a wedding dress for her niece Cherie. She was a gifted musician who played the piano by ear, eventually learning how to read music. She had a lovely soprano voice and often sang at church and other functions. She was a talented cook whose intuitive understanding of the art of preparing food meant she often worked without recipes; however, baking was her downfall, as she didn't like being “required” to measure ingredients. She was a self-taught painter, preferring oils to watercolors, and left this world with several examples of beauty hanging on the walls of her family’s homes. She was passionate about her politics (she WAS NOT happy with the leadership of the nation or the state). She loved her dogs - Peppino, Blackie, Fluffy, ZZ, Cocoa, Greta, Prince, and finally... Vera Grace. She even loved her cat, Lucky. She had an often-unexpected sense of humor. She also had an occasional sharp tongue - you didn’t want to get on her bad side, because that likely would be a place of permanent residence for you. She was, more than not, quiet, and often averse to crowds. She thrived best in small groups of people. Although she was not very comfortable sharing her own emotions, she enjoyed the art of interpreting and observing the emotions of others. Sometimes she was right, and sometimes she was not, but that never compromised her efforts. She was particularly interested in handwriting analysis as a tool for understanding how people acted.

As is often the case with folks born in the depth of the Depression, what was most important to her were relationships, particularly with her family. She had a deep affection for her parents, her siblings (particularly her older sister, Willene), her cousins, nieces, and nephews, and ultimately, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchild. Even as disease robbed her of mobility and sentience, she always knew whom she loved.

In 2013, Henry died from complications of a stroke. Shortly afterwards, Vera returned to live in Pocahontas. Eventually, her declining health reached the point where she needed to live with caretakers - first with her son and daughter-in-law in Kentucky, then finally with her daughter and son-in-law in Black Oak, Arkansas.

In the last years of her life, her conversations and stories often turned to her childhood in Whittaker. She looked back on it as an almost perfect time of play, adventure, innocence, and deep familial love. In 2015, on one particular visit back to her birthplace (which by that time was just an abandoned barn, a copse of trees, and a bare patch of ground in the middle of a soybean field) the family saw a truck coming off the state highway and up the long, dusty road. A curious and wary farmer stepped out and politely but firmly asked why she was on his land. When she said “I was born here!” the farmer broke into a smile - “Oh, here on the old Sawyers place!”

She was preceded in death by her husband, Henry, and by her parents and her two adult siblings - brother Conway Sawyers and his wife, Marcie; sister Willene Sawyers Austin and her husband Shelby; and her older brother Wayne, who died in infancy. She is survived by her children; Bruce (Esther) Breeding of Lexington, Kentucky, and Laura Lizanne Breeding Cook (Billy) of Black Oak, Arkansas. She is also survived by her grandsons; she was "Baboo" to Nathan Robert Cook, of the U.S. Army, currently stationed at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland; John Benjamin Abraham (Emily) of Frederick, Maryland; and Strohmann Whittaker Breeding of Lexington, Kentucky. She was extremely proud of her namesake - her great-granddaughter Vera DeLyne Abraham, of Frederick, Maryland. She is also survived by several cousins, nieces and nephews, numerous friends and former students.

A private interment will be at Dry Creek Cemetery in Lynn, Arkansas. A celebration of Vera’s life, and that of her husband Henry, will be held later this year at Koinonia Church in Imboden, Arkansas. Expressions of sympathy or condolences can be sent her daughter at PO Box 76, Black Oak, Arkansas 72414. Gifts can be made in Vera’s memory to two organizations that reflect her values:

The Northeast Arkansas Humane Society, 6111 E. Highland Drive, Jonesboro, AR 72401 (870) 932-5185. neahs.org. and the PAN Foundation. When Vera was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, she drew great comfort from the writings of Michael J. Fox, whose book referred her to the PAN Foundation, an entity which greatly helped her defray the tremendous cost of her anti-tremor medications. Patient Access Network Foundation PO Box 411439 Boston, MA 02241-1439 panfoundation.org. Finally, the family would like to offer its gratitude to the staff and employees in the Emergency Department of St. Bernard’s Medical Center for their professionalism, kindness and support.