Madeline (Yates) Sexton

Madeline Sexton

Born the second of nine children to a timberman named Fred Yates and a woman named Stella, Madge began her life on March 12, 1921. She was raised on Sandy Ridge near Clintwood, Va. until 1939 when she married Tom Sexton, Sr., and was devoted to him for 68 years until he passed in 2007. She followed him in her passing on November 22, 2017.

Madge grew up in an era when men were men and women were glad for it. That grit saw her through the “Hard Times” of the Great Depression and sending off four brothers to war. Her earliest memories were of standing on a stool and cooking for her family or tending to her younger siblings so her mother could perform other necessary burdens to keep the home in order. While there were other endeavors in her life, the most noble was that Madge raised children. Whether it be her younger siblings, her son Tom Jr., her grandsons Fred and David, her great-grandsons Spencer and Cole, or the doll she clutched in the last year of her life, she had an unwavering maternal instinct for those important to her.

As a new grandmother, Madge wanted to be called Nana but that proved too complex for her first grandson to pronounce. She became known to all as Nan Nan and later as “Ole Sweet Nan Nan”. Many of the comforts and opportunities in the lives of her son and grandsons originated with Ole Sweet Nan Nan. A product of her formative years, shoes and food were always her first priority for them. Every grocery store trip always yielded a small sack of items for them to take home and many gift giving occasions involved shoes. It was impossible for her grandsons to leave her house with being slipped a ten or twenty from her private stash she accumulated by “paying” herself for not spending excessively at the beauty shop.

Madge was a decades long member of Temple Baptist Church. While her family and those who knew her will miss and remember her when she was at her best, there is nothing sad about having 96 good years. If the Heaven she faithfully believed in really does exist then there is no doubt she is there now. If it doesn’t, then she is surely riding a glorious ray of positive energy across the universe and still being Ole Sweet Nan Nan in whatever form that takes.

Snyder’s Memorial Gardens, funeral home Gray, TN. is honored to be serving the family of Madeline Sexton.

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