Mayme McGinnis Mayberry

2006 

(Remembered by her sister Rose Mary Neal) 

Mayme told her sister that when the public schools were integrated in 1955, she would have felt like an outcast at Liberty High School if Karol Peterson, who had recently enrolled at LHS, hadn’t welcomed her.  She was always grateful for that friendship.   

For a few years after graduating from LHS, Mayme worked at Menorah Hospital.  Then she married and began her family, two daughters and one son.  She was devoted to her family but, according to her sister, was not a very good cook.  Her kids would say, “Just make us a cheese burger.  Everything you make tastes the same!”   

Mayme held several jobs during the years she reared her children.  She was a secretary at International Harvester and a babysitter for the Head Start program, keeping children in her home.  She was very active in St. Luke’s AME Church and especially liked to coordinate dinners for the church community, dinners for which her special friend Frank Hickmon served as chef.  She liked to fuss over and run errands for the elderly ladies in the congregation. Even when her health failed, she worried about her little old ladies. 

Mayme was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1993, and in the last two years of her life, she kept a happy smile and a positive attitude.  

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