Lillian Faye Gotcher

Lillian Faye Akins Gotcher, 91, of Ballinger, died Sunday, January 4, 2009 at Ballinger Memorial Hospital. The memorial service will be at 1:30 P.M. on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at Hopewell Baptist Church near Winters, Texas. Her brothers, Ferris Akins and Bynum Akins, and her nephew, Marty Akins, will officiate. She will be privately interred at Wilson Mausoleum in Wolfforth, Texas.

Lillian was born in McCaulley, Fisher County, Texas on March 5, 1917 to the late Martin Luther and Beulah Mae Akins. She graduated from McCaulley High School and attended the University of Mary Hardin Baylor at Belton. During World War II, she was employed by the FBI in Washington D.C. and El Paso, Texas. She met Howard Gotcher while working at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, and they married in 1951 in Abilene where her parents lived. They had one son, Mark, and lived in Fort Worth until Howard’s death in 1961.

Lillian and her son moved to Lubbock, Texas to live with her sister, Cleo. She attended LVN school and worked for 30 years at Highland Hospital in Lubbock. She later cared for her sisters, Cleo and Icey, who lived in the home they all shared. She was saved as a girl and baptized at McCaulley Baptist Church. She was a long-time member of Elgin Avenue Baptist Church and later a member of Lubbock Baptist Temple. In 2006, her son died, and she moved to Ballinger to live with her brother, Ferris Akins and his wife. She joined the church he pastors, Hopewell Baptist Church. She was a caring Christian lady and a good nurse.

Preceding Lillian in death were her parents, her husband and son, three brothers, her twin sister, Lillie Dale Russo, and five other sisters.

She is survived by two brothers, Ferris Akins of Ballinger, Bynum Akins of Garland, three sisters, Nola Vymola of Forney, Corinne Pinson of Warner Robins, Georgia and Martha Lewellen of Austin. She is also survived by other Akins relatives, Gotcher relatives and many nieces and nephews.

She had been a resident of Runnels County Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Ballinger since May, 2007. Our thanks to all of our friends there for the good care she received and the very special attention from Bell Nieto.