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Sharp Family News Items
Obituary of Rev. Eron M. Sharp

Commercial Appeal- Memphis TN - Aug 9 1986 Rev. Eron Sharp dies; rites to be tomorrow   Rev. Eron M. Sharp, 82 of 3477 Higland Cove, retired Method ist minister of the North Missi- missippi Conference, died at 6:15 a.m. yesterday at Methodist Hos pital after a long illness. ___Services will be at 2 p.m. to morrow at St. Luke's United Methodist Church with burial in Oak Grove Cemetery in Iuka Miss. Memorial Park. Funeral Home has charge. ___Mr. Sharp served as a pastor to several Mid-South churches dur- ing his career, including a stint as United Methodist superinten- dent of the Cleveland district. ___A native of Leake County Miss., Mr. Sharp was educated at Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss. and Duke University at Durham N.C. Among the churches he pas- ored were Hernando First Unit- ed Methodist church, Aberdeen First United Methodist church New Albany First United Meth- odist Church and Greenwood First United Methodist church   ___He was conference secretary Of the North Mississippi Confer- ence and edited the church jour- nal there for 16 years. He helped found Lake Stephens United Methodist Camp in Oxford, Mis., and was on its board of di- rectors for several years. ___Mr. Sharp was an instructor of Bible studies at Grenada College and, upon retirement, served as assistant circulation librarian at Memphis State University. He was the first chaplain of Wesley Highland Towers, a retirement home, and continued to serve there until his illness. ___He leaves his wife, Mrs. Alma Blissit Sharp, and a sister, Mrs. Louisa Sharp of Oxford, Miss. The family requests any mem- orials be sent to St. Luke's Unit- ed Methodist Church in Mem- phis, Lake Stephens United Methodist camp in Oxford or to Wood College in Mathiston, Miss.

COMMERICAL APPEAL - Memphis, TN Tuesday, December 10, 1985 Three pillars remain Standing after deaths     By Rheta Grimsley Johnson Staff Reporter ___ TISHOMINGO, Miss. _ There is still plenty of life about the neat, white house on the dead- end street ___ Winter has not yet stolen all the green. ___There are two, not one, but   two, porch swings creaking ever so comfortably in the consider- able December draft. ___You can stand in the yard and Hear the Tishomingo High School band practicing a few Streets over, root-a-toot tooting in rag-tag formation right down the middle of a public road. ___In Tishomingo, pedestrians Please see JOHNSON, page C2   Rheta Grimsley Johnson These are the sisters of Mrs. Alma Sharp, wife of Rev. E.M. Sharp, Blissit sisters leave indelible mark on communitites   JOHNSON, from C-1 are rarely bullied by traffic. __ It is a quiet town, one built mostly of stone, and that from a single quarry. __ The Blissit sisters, LuVera and Gertrude, lived in this particular house, its angles neat and white as a business envelope. __ They kept the yard clean and the porch swept because LeVera had asthma and could not toler- ate dust, and because that is just the way they were. __ Theirs was an old Tishomingo family, well known and respect- ed. Their father, the late J. T. Blissit, used to run a general store, where you could by al- most anything. __ "We even bought our school books there, back before they were furnished," says Ava Hill, now principal of Tishomingo Elementary. __ It was Mrs. Hill whom the law called upon Nov. 29 to identify the mangled bodies of LuVera and Gertrude and a third sister Mary Blissit Jackson of Her- nando. __ Mrs. Hill had known all three women all her life, but identifi- cation did not come easily. __ A car carrying the three Mis- sissippi sisters, ages 77, 73, and 71, apparently was run off the road by an unidentified white automobile that did not bother to   stop. __ The Blissits had been to visit Mrs. Jackson, who buried her husband only about five weeks ago. They all had done some Christmas shopping. __ The three were returning home, at dusk, down the treach- erous spit of asphalt called U.S. 25. __ U.S. 25 is virtually racetrack for pulpwooders and other drivers in a commercial hurry, piercing quiet Tishominto's western edge at a parallel, like a There is an awkward, biblical- sounding verb that seems apt here; To cleave . . . splinter lodged just beneath the skin. __The Blissits and Mrs. Jackson were southbound on the two- lane. Southbound to Tishomingo. ___ Now that town is in shock. Ask anybody. He will tell you. The Blissit sisters weill be mourned and missed. __ LuVera Blissit taught at Tisho- mingo Elementary for 39½ years. She was principal for   about 25 of those years. __ She ws stern. No-Nonsense. __ "It was like that E. F. Hutton commercial," says Mrs. Hill, "When she talked, people lis- tened." __ Students did as she told them. Nobody talked in the cafeteria. They ate. __ The school building is a typi- cal, perhaps sterotypical facili- ty, with its cavernous halls and clanking lockers, cameo- cropped faces of students past smiling down from a dozen com- posities. For 25 years, at least, it was kept immaculate at Miss Blissit's direction. __ No teacher left a faculty meet- ing wondering what ws expect- ed. LuVera Blissit knew her mind and shared it. __ Gertrude Blissit was much the same way in her chosen profes- sion. She was a banker and the picture of competence for 30 Years. __ When she retired in 1976, Miss Blissit was the branch manager of First Citizens Bank of Tisho- mingo. __ Her customers generally in- sisted on seeing only her. About a loan. About a special problem. About routine, daily business. __ She was trusted. __ The third sister, Mrs. Jackson, also was a retired banker, end-   ing her carrer as vice president of the old Hernando Bank, she was a charter member of the west Tennessee Group of Bank Women in Memphis. __The sisters were garden club and choir members, the predict- able pillars of their repective communities __They took care of their moth- er who died in 1974. They took care of two arthritic brothers. They took care of one another. __There is an awkward, bibical sounding verb that Seems apt here: To cleave. They cleaved one to another. They Stuck fast. __The two new graves at little Spring Hill Cemetery off U.S. 25 are only a few miles from the ac- cident site. The pastel ribbons on dozens of funeral weaths have yet to fade or wash to white Death is to fresh. __Even the grave markers have not yet arrived, and you must trust the significance of dis- turbed red clay and floral tri- butes to know where the Blissits are buried. __You can look from those graves to the road where too many travel too fast. And you can only wonder what three sis- ters who made someting of their lives were talking or think- ing when those lives ended __They probably never traveled   this way without thinking of her. __Velma Blissit Mercer --1903- 1964. another sister, buried at Spring Hill, too. __She was killed within five miles of this latest accident, the tragedy that took three sisters __Killed on the same road, in the same lovely North Mississippi   Hills. In an isolated place where the woods are still dense and the creeks still clear and only one major highway disturbs the peace.   THANK YOU NOTE: Dear Friends; Your prayers, cards, calls, flowers, and the many other expressions of your live and concern for me and from dudring the six years he has been ill, and especialy since Nov. 29 whn I lost my three sisters in a tragic acciednt; All of this can never be measured. Great appreciateion goes to Dr. Carr, Dr. Grant, Virginia West, and every other member of the church staff for their devotions to me. Let no one say that St. Luke's is not a redemptive fellowship. God has surely shown His face throug you to us. Pleas know I love you and individual thank you notes will follow by and by. May God's richest blessings be yours.__________....Alma Sharp