Mary DuPree

Published 12:00 am Friday, January 15, 2010

Funeral services for Mary Kennette DuPree, 93, of LaGrange, Ga., formerly of Decatur County, were held Tuesday, Jan. 12, at Striffler-Hamby Funeral Home in Columbus, Ga., with the Rev. Ben Bennett presiding.

Interment followed at the Concord United Methodist Church in Concord, Ga.

Born Mary Kennette Poitevint on April 16, 1916, on a farm in Decatur County, Ga., Mrs. DuPree died on Friday, Jan. 8, 2010, at LaGrange Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in LaGrange, Ga., after a long illness.

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She earned an associate’s degree in home economics from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Ga., where she met her future husband, Byrom Edward DuPree. They married on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 1936. Byrom and Kennette later returned to help run the farm and she gave birth to their only child, James Edward DuPree, on Dec. 1, 1937, in Bainbridge, Ga.

During World War II, Byrom served as a Navy cook while Kennette, instead of riveting, learned to sew military uniforms at the Manhattan Shirt Factory in Americus, Ga., while sharing her house with other military wives whose husbands were away at war. Postwar, Kennette served as a bookkeeper, assisting Byrom in forming and managing the Dairy Co-op in Americus. In 1952, they moved to Columbus, where Byrom became ice cream sales manager at Wells Dairies, and Kennette continued working as bookkeeper, this time in the mortgage loan processing business. She retired as corporate secretary of The Georgia Company, a subsidiary of Synovus, in 1981. By that time, Byrom had earned a bachelor’s and master’s at Columbus State University and retired as the coordinator of evening courses at Columbus Tech.

She is predeceased by her parents; by her brothers: Dr. Ottis Lamar Poitevint, Alec Lloyd Poitevint and Quay Poitevint; by a sister-in-law, Louise Darley Poitevint, and by her husband, the Rev. Byrom Edward DuPree.

She is survived by her only child, James Edward DuPree, Ph.D., of Harris County, Ga.; her older brother, Dr. Coy Hansel Poitevint, of Dothan, Ala.; two grandsons, a great-grandson, her daughter-in-law, three sisters-in-law, including Agnes Joyce Lynn Poitevint of Bainbridge; two nieces; two nephews, Alec Lloyd Poitevint II and Stephen Phillip Poitevint, both of Bainbridge; numerous great nephews and great nieces; and other family and friends.

Striffler-Hamby Funeral Home in Columbus, Ga., was in charge of arrangements.