of Searcy, AR

October 3, 1945 - April 16, 2025

Elizabeth Kennemer Wilson was born on October 3, 1945 to Andrew Timotheus Kennemer and Flora Robertson Kennemer in Athens, Alabama. Her father was a sharecropper. In addition, he held a variety of jobs to provide clothing, shelter, and food for his family of six girls. After his youngest child, Elizabeth, was born, Mr. Kennemer gave up trying to have boys to help with the farming. Mr. Kennemer had no choice but to put the six girls to work to help provide income for the family. Elizabeth did her share of cotton picking, snapping beans, and other farming chores growing up.

Beth was active and popular in school and became Miss East Limestone High in 1963. President of FHA, Beta Club member and Valedictorian filled out her resume. Mrs. Thomas, her Home Economics Teacher, was key to her applying and being admitted to the University of Alabama. Amongst the U of Alabama Home Economics Faculty, she was known as Argent Courington Thomas's girl. Her parents were worried about Beth's leaving home but did not prevent her. On the first night there, her roommate called Ed and asked him to take her out to prevent her from being left alone in the dorm.

Beth was a beautiful woman with a strong moral core who loved the Lord and her family intensely. After two years of dating Ed, they were married August 28, 1965. After graduation, Beth with a BS and MS in Home Economics and Ed with an MS and PhD in Chemistry, they moved to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where Beth worked as a Clinical Dietitian at the University of Virginia Hospital while Ed spent two years as Postdoctoral researcher in the University of Virginia Department of Chemistry. While in Charlottesville, Beth and Ed attended the Rugby Avenue Church of Christ and became close friends with the preacher, Bob McReady, and his family. They visited all over the State whenever there was a Gospel Meeting.

In 1970, Ed's first job was at Harding University as a teacher in the Department of Physical Science. A year later, Beth accepted a position at Harding University as a teacher in the Department of Home Economics. Beth planned to work for only one year to pay off a down payment loan on the new house they bought. However, she continued to work at Harding for 46 more years! She rose to the position of Department Chair upon retirement of Dr. Mildred Bell in 1984. While teaching full time at Harding, Beth attended graduate school at Memphis State University and graduated in 1991. Beth's life was founded on the simple principles of love of God, love of family, service to all. She was at every event for her husband and her daughter even while in graduate school in Memphis. Her young daughter and husband drove her over to Memphis twice a week and went to the various Memphis malls, museums, and sites of interest while she attended classes. Beth won Harding's Distinguished Teaching Award twice during her career and was loved and respected by many of her students. She retired in 2017 and promptly went to work as a volunteer at College Church of Christ's His House and continued to serve on the board and as a volunteer worker at the White County Domestic Violence Center. Her devotion to serving her family, her students, and her community was apparent to all.

Her daughter Stephanie Joy came into the world in 1971 and was truly the joy of her mom's life. She served as a softball coach, soccer mom, and ultimate fan of all that Joy did. It was obvious that she considered Ed and Joy to twin pinnacles of her life. In later years, the family would take many long driving trips in the summer and Beth spent all year planning and saving so that we could all do and see anything of interest to us without worries of cost or time. She loved being surrounded by God's beautiful natural wonders even when she was terrified of the heights through which we drove. Her enthusiasm for the time we spent as a family together telling stories, making jokes and memories, and seeing new places was unbounded.

She passed from this world to the next during the night of April 16, 2025 after a year of one medical complication after another. She survived by her Husband, Edmond Wilson, of Searcy, daughter, Stephanie Joy Wilson, of Murfreesboro Tennessee, and two older sisters, Louise Woodfin of Florence, Alabama, Naomi Abernathy of Athens, Alabama. Three sisters, Maycelle Smith of Athens, Alabama, Imogene James of Florence, Alabama, and Bonnie Reeves of Rogersville, Alabama preceded her in death.

Obituary Provided By:
Roller-Daniel Funeral Home
411 East Race Avenue
Searcy, AR  72145
www.rollerfuneralhomes.com