Etta Mae Gill

Etta Mae Gill, 82, passed away at home August 30, 2026, surrounded by family.

She is survived by her son Keith (Cindy) Gill, grandchildren, John (Lacey) Gill, Brian (Rachel) Gill, Clay Gill, Coy Gill, Emma Gill; great-grandchildren Arthur, Jameson, Ivy, Cayson, Freya, Evelyn; brothers, Ronald (Pam) Thomas, Dale Thomas and sister, Shirley (Wally) Sowell. Preceded in death by her husband John Lanier Gill, son Kenneth Lanier Gill, grandson Caleb Gill, mother Annie Catherine Tucker Thomas, and father Clayton D. Thomas.

Etta Mae has spent a lifetime being a place of safety for other people.

The oldest of four children, she was raised on a hog farm in the hills and hollers of Lincoln County, Tennessee. Etta Mae grew up roaming those hills with her two younger brothers and baby sister. It was a childhood that taught her to be tough—but toughness never came at the expense of her softness. She grew into a woman who was remarkably strong and unmistakably feminine, with a beauty that goes far beyond the way she looks.

In high school, Etta Mae was a gifted basketball player—a true athlete with a talent that those who watched her play still remember years later.

In 1961, she married the love of her life and became part of a tobacco-farming family, stepping into another kind of farm and another kind of hard work. Together, they had two boys, Ken and Keith. Etta Mae was never someone who watched the work happen from the porch. She was in the field through every stage of the crop alongside the men. She stood faithfully beside her husband in the traditional way so many Southern women of her generation did, but anyone who knows this family understands something else, too: Etta Mae has been quietly holding so much of it together.

She was an example to her boys in the truest sense—not because she ever needed to announce what she was teaching them, but because they watched her live it. They saw her work hard, love faithfully, serve others and meet every responsibility with strength and grace. Through her example, Ken and Keith learned what it meant to show up for family, to do a job well, and to care for people without needing recognition.

The farmhouse they built their life around became much more than a family home. It’s the place where holidays have been celebrated, losses have been mourned, babies have grown up, meals have been shared, and seemingly everyone has known the door is always open.

Etta Mae was born into hog farming and never strayed very far from it. She sold pork from the family’s hogs, which meant an ordinary afternoon at her house might be interrupted by a knock at the door from a stranger who had come to buy sausage. Just as often, though, the person knocking wasn’t there for pork at all. Someone would be passing by and simply stop in.

That is Etta Mae.

Her door is open.

There is no way to know how many people have found refuge on the other side of it over the years. Family, friends, neighbors, and people who simply needed somewhere safe to land have always known that time passing didn’t change their welcome. Etta Mae has a remarkable ability to make a person feel completely seen, understood and supported. When she’s with you, she can make you feel as though you are the most important person in the world—and somehow, she manages to give that same feeling to everyone.

Sometimes she doesn’t need to say anything at all.

There’s something about Etta Mae’s hands. She can sit beside someone who’s anxious or hurting, quietly rubbing their back or leg, and somehow make things feel a little more bearable. It’s a small gesture that carries everything she is: gentleness, presence, comfort and unconditional love.

Her faith is woven through all of it.

Etta Mae has always been a prayer warrior, the kind of woman who seems to carry on a conversation with God throughout the entire day. But her faith has never existed only in words. She lives it. She loves first and reserves judgment. She feeds people. She welcomes people. She sits with people when they hurt. She makes room.

To her family, she is the matriarch—the woman at the center of generations of memories and the foundation upon which so much of their family has been built. To countless others, she became something of an adopted grandmother. And throughout Lincoln County, she has been one of those quiet pillars of a community whose influence is almost impossible to measure because so much of it happened privately: a meal, an open door, a prayer, a conversation, a hand on someone’s back.

Her life has also required a kind of strength no mother, wife, or grandmother should ever have to find.

She buried her oldest son, Ken, in 2003 and then buried a grandson, Caleb in 2009—an order of loss that no one should have to endure. Years later, during the COVID pandemic, she lost her husband of 60 years, her father, and her best friend in six days.

And still, Etta Mae continued to love.

That may be one of the clearest ways to understand the woman she is. Her strength has never made her hard. Loss has never taken away her tenderness. Her faith has never made her judgmental.

Through a lifetime of extraordinary joy, ordinary work and unimaginable grief, she has continued to choose love, service, family and God.

She is a farmer. An athlete. A wife. A mother. A grandmother. A sister. A daughter. A friend. A neighbor. A woman of deep faith.

She is the kind of woman described in Proverbs 31—the virtuous woman whose strength is matched by dignity, whose hands are willing to work, whose home is a place of provision, and whose life speaks through what she has done for others.

For her family, though, perhaps the simplest way to say it is the truest:

We are who we are because of Etta Mae. 🤍

A funeral service will be held on Saturday, September 5, 2026, at Higgins Funeral Home with Bro. David England officiating. A private burial will take place in the Gill Family Cemetery. Visitation with the family will be from 4 PM until 8 PM on Friday, September 4, 2026, at Higgins Funeral Home.

Memorial donations may be made to Oak Hill Baptist Church, 10 Wiley Hollow Road, Fayetteville, TN 37334.

Higgins Funeral Home is privileged to offer comfort, care, and support to the family of Etta Mae Gill.