BESSIE LAWLESS

BESSIE LAWLESS

CARTHAGE-Services will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at Konantz Warden Funeral Home in Lamar for Bessie Lavone Lawless, 94, Carthage, who died Sunday, Nov. 27, 2016. Rev. James Lee will officiate. Burial will be at Memory Gardens Cemetery in Lamar. A visitation will be held prior to the service on Friday, beginning at 1 p.m.

A visitation will also be held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, at Ulmer Funeral Home in Carthage.

The obituary may be viewed and condolences left online at www.konantzwarden.com.

Survivors include a son, Gene Lawless, Joplin; a daughter, Lois Prier, Carthage; six grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by one sister and seven brothers.

Mrs. Lawless was born June 22, 1922, in Oronogo, to Sam and Viola (Minkler) Storm. Her family moved to Barton County when she was a teenager and she was a 1940 graduate of Lamar High School. Mrs. Lawless never had a job she didn't like. During WW II she was an inspector at the Tent Factory in Lamar and later after moving to Kansas City she worked at North American Aviation as a riveter, building B25's. After the war ended she worked at Barton County Memorial Hospital and Barton County Ambulance Service. She was a retired LPN, having been employed for 42 years by the Lamar Clinic and Dr. Cain. She held membership in the Missouri State Association of LPN's for 20 years.

She married Elmer Ned Lawless on July 27, 1940, in Jasper. He died in 1992 and in 1993 she moved to Carthage to be closer to family.

She retired in 2000, only to start volunteering at St. Luke's Nursing Home, the Red Cross and McCune Brooks Hospital. Wherever she was, she had fun. She loved people, gardening and her many flowers.

She was a member of the Lamar United Methodist Church for 50 years. In 1993, after moving to Carthage, she became a member of the Carthage Methodist Church.