The Cardinals can try again for the Series next year, but they lost forever a true fan when Phoebe Nye Thompson died Saturday, November 23, 2013. She still remembered some of the Carrollton baseball games from 90 years ago when she was taken by her father Melzar James Nye, the town pharmacist. He would push her head down when a pop fly headed their way. Her mother, Lillian Donnelly Nye, didn't worry enough to stop her going, so Phoebe learned baseball.
Phoebe was not fond of losing – she said she did it poorly. She taught and coached basketball at J. Z. George High School after she graduated from MSCW in 1940. Likewise, she quickly quit her job as a welfare worker at the Depression's end when it meant searching someone's house for the jewelry that might cost them their relief check.
Polio in 1944 had a devastating and lasting impact on her life. After polio her work was solely raising a daughter, Phoebe Nye, and a son, Peter, who remember her as a mother who read and read to them – gory stuff, poetry, classics and newspapers.
Phoebe met Adrian Thompson in school and married him in 1942. After his being drafted they lived in Washington, D.C., where guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Solder. He said he got the assignment because he was tall; she said it was because he was so good-looking. They lived in Fort Benning, Georgia, while he was in the Army's Ranger School before he was sent to Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. Widowed since 1993, Phoebe maintained the position of matriarch of the Nye family.
She was the last of four siblings, preceded by Alice Babington, by Melzar Nye, who was called Boy, and by William Wallace Nye.
In addition to her two children, she is survived by several grandchildren, great-grandchildren, one great-great-grandchild, and many nieces and nephews who were boosted by birthdays that were never forgotten, good advice on books to read, desserts (especially the lemon ones) and day lilies spawned in her yard and transplanted to others two and three states away.
The family would like to say a special thank-you to Regina Jackson, Phoebe's friend and caregiver for the past year.
Phoebe was a member of the Carrollton Presbyterian Church and brave enough to say she didn't know where she'd be by the time this hit the newspaper. The following quote is from the broken-backed book of C.S. Lewis readings she kept by her bed, one of the few pages marked with a faintly penciled X: "God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it – made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand."
Funeral services are 2 P.M. Tuesday November 26, 2013 at the Carrollton Presbyterian Church. Visitation is from 1-2 at the church. Interment will be in Evergreen cemetery.
Memorials may be made to French Camp Academy or the charity of donor's choice.
An online guest book may be signed at www.wilsonandknight.com.