Mrs. Ozie Hicks Ray

Services:  Friday, Sept. 18, 2009   2:00 @ Good Hope Baptist ChurchInterment:  Good Hope CemeteryOzie Ilean Hicks Ray, 86, a descendant of some of the oldest members of the Good Hope Baptist Church community, including the Deweeses and the Neeses, died in Neshoba County General Hospital Tuesday night, September 15, 2009. Before her entry into the Neshoba County Nursing Home in 2005, she had lived on Kosciusko Road late in her life. Mrs. Ray was born in Philadelphia on July 4, 1923 to her parents, Higy Newton Hicks and Mary Elizabeth Deweese Hicks. As a child she grew up in various rural areas of Neshoba County and graduated from Linwood High School in 1944. After graduation, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she met her first husband, Thomas Quincy Brown, the father of her three children. About 1946, she and her husband returned to Philadelphia, started a family, and opened the Radio and Television Hospital, a repair shop once operated on Beacon Street west of the town square. Both were active members of the Good Hope Baptist Church for many years. Mr. Brown often sang gospel songs on WHOC radio station and led the singing for Good Hope revivals and services.For a brief period between 1953 and 1955, the couple moved the business to Newton, Mississippi and then returned to Neshoba County to the Thomas Clark Place in 1956. In 1957, they moved the business again, this time settling in Union, MS, where she assisted her husband with operating the business until 1966, when they relocated to Decatur. Mr. Brown died in Decatur in 1978, and in the 1980s, she married Mr. Hubert, a longtime friend also originally from Neshoba County. After Mr. Ray’s death in 1995, she returned to Philadelphia to be near Good Hope Baptist Church and her extended family in the area, including her cousin, the late Lula Mae Simms Brown, and her late brother-in-law, John Brown, who also lived near Kosciusko Road during that time. Throughout her life, even when she moved neighboring areas, she regularly returned to visit Good Hope to be near her church family and her relatives. She taught Sunday School classes and was an avid gardener and homemaker.Mrs. Ray was preceded in death by her father Higy Newton Hicks; her mother, Mary Elizabeth Hicks Alston; one sister, Mabell Hicks; two brothers, Bolie Hicks formerly of Philadelphia, and Cosper Hicks, formerly of Jackson; her first husband; Thomas Quincy Brown; her son, Paul Douglas Brown of Fort Worth, TX; and her second husband, Hubert Ray. Mrs. Ray is survived by two daughters, Wanda Brown Foster of Fort Worth, Texas; Shirley Brown Martin of Greenville, Mississippi; two stepsons, Thomas Stanley Brown of Greenville, Texas and Dwight Ray, of Pascagoula; one step daughter, Jackie Ray also of Pascagoula; two nieces, Betty Lynn Hicks and Jeannette Hicks of Philadelphia; three nephews, David Jerome Hicks of Philadelphia and Dewayne and Timmy Hicks of the Jackson area; and several grandnieces and grandnephews.