OWENS, Tessie V. (Snethen) 1933-2025
OWENS, SNETHEN, MOSS
Posted By: Volunteer
Date: 1/8/2025 at 08:40:51
Tessie V. Snethen Owens
Sadly, our dear mother passed away on January 1, 2025, at the wonderful age of ninety-one. She was our rock of support and wisdom throughout our lives and will be greatly missed.
Tessie Valora (Snethen) Owens was born on March 15, 1933, in Harrison County, Missouri, the oldest of eight children of Luther and Velma (Moss) Snethen. She graduated from the Independence Sanitarium School of Nursing in 1953. While nursing, she met the love of her life, a patient with a gregarious personality, Donald E. Owens. They began a life together marrying in 1954, that was filled with laughter, love, and family.
Tessie’s professional career led her to differing nursing positions at the Independence Sanitarium Hospital including the operating theatre, and progressed, most notably as the director of nursing at Truman Neurological Center, Kansas City, MO, and at the Poplar Bluff Regional Center. She believed nursing should be practiced with equal parts medicine and dignity.
Tessie was a talented artist, first using paint as her medium and then her love of color pushed her sewing from that of necessity to an artform. In 2013, her quilts were featured during the SantaCaliGon festival where she greeted visitors and provided context about her displayed quilts. Tess was an avid bird watcher, a voracious reader, and a “pen only” crossword wizard.
She is preceded in death by her husband, Don, her parents, three brothers Robert (Linda), Luther Jr. (Lee), Paul (Linda), and sister Marjorie “Beth” Tingle (Jim).
She is survived by her sisters Phyllis Durbin (Bob), Eleanor “Joann” Konopasek (Larry), and brother Kenneth Snethen (Janet); her five children, Don Owens, Jr., (Alilah), Richard Owens, Joy Horner (Guy), Andrew Owens (Sally), and Melissa Russell; twelve grandchildren; twenty-seven great grandchildren; and two great-great grandchildren. She was the eldest of her cousins and had many nephews and nieces all of whom she thoroughly enjoyed visiting with every chance that she had.
The family will hold a celebration of life in the springtime. In an act of remembrance of Tessie, please consider visiting your local library and checking out a book (or twenty), as she did regularly. She would like that.
Contributed by Conni McDaniel Hall - Tessie's niece.
Decatur Obituaries maintained by Constance McDaniel Hall.
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