Graveside services for Charlotte Frances Jolley Alexander, 96, of Madison, Miss., were held on Monday, June 17, at the Greenville Cemetery in Greenville, Miss.  She died peacefully on Friday, June 14, 2019, at home with her family in Madison. Sammy L. Wood, Rector at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church officiated.  Arrangements were under the direction of Boone Funeral Home in Greenville.

She was born on December 27, 1922, in Rome, Ga., to Marvin P. and Hallie Gaines Jolley. She attended Shorter College in Rome and graduated from Northwestern University as a dental hygienist. At Northwestern she met her future husband, Hugh Allan Alexander, and she left her beloved Georgia for a life in Greenville, where they raised six daughters. Her family also includes 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Her children and grandchildren knew her to be a wise and grounded person, but were captivated by her fanciful, imaginative personality.

Granddaughter Hallie, a poet, wrote the following tribute to her grandmother “ShaSha”:

Stripped of all narrative, almost fully unhooked from time,
she was at the root of herself a lady,
a queen among ladies as they make them now.
Whenever I came into town, she mused,
everyone would come out into the street and cheer.
It seems only a little far-fetched. Likewise the faces
in the pale of sky between pine spires, ugly
they were, and menacing. Macular degeneration
burned holes into her house but gave the clouds
elaborate dramas, the objects of immediate life
could hardly entertain such a visionary.
She could not hold in her mind the truth of her age,
her distance from youth stunned her continually.
Still in her someplace inviolate lived a dignity
purer than manners, braver than loss, finer
than her reproachless taste. Alas, the queen
is dead. The townspeople weep in the streets.

Mrs. Alexander was preceded in death by her husband, Dr. Hugh Allan Alexander. She leaves her daughters, Lynn Schaffarzick (Bill), of Greenville, Ann Brown (Garry), of Waxahachie, Texas, Allan Alexander, of Oxford, Miss., Charlotte Walker (Jeff) of Madison, Mary Rundle, of New Orleans, La., and Julia Ming (Jeff), of Shelby; grandchildren, Will Schaffarzick (Brigette), Kate Rooney (John), Hugh Brown, Lara Crum (Adam), Reed Cochran, Tyler Walker (Whitney), Allan Perkinson (Jake), Hallie Rundle, Virginia Swider (David), Charlotte Ming, Robert Ming, and six great-grandchildren.

The family would like to extend thanks to Dr. Mark Meeks, Nurse Practitioner Mary Virginia Webb Gibson, long-term caregiver Alberta Payton, recent caregivers at Covenant Caregivers, the staff at UMMC 2 North, and the staff at Home Care Hospice.

The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to The Mind Center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.