IDA M. DILLARD
Ida Mae Black Dillard passed away on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016 after a lengthy illness.
She was born June 14, 1931, along the banks of the Red River west of Canfield. She was the daughter of Captain and Ethel Mae Barham Black.
She was preceded in death by her parents; and her husband of 61 years, Ernest J. “Buddy” Dillard Jr.
She graduated from Bradley High School in 1949 as salutatorian among a class of 13. She attended Magnolia A & M and received an associate degree from Southern State College in 1949. She was married to Ernest J. “Buddy” Dillard Jr. on June 9, 1951, at the Canfield Baptist Church. She later returned to Southern Arkansas University, graduating with an accounting degree in 1980.
She was elected and served on the Lafayette County Quorum Court as a justice of the peace. After she lost her first bid for justice of the peace by one vote, she organized and ran again and won the position and served the community she loved for several terms.
She accomplished all of this while raising four children and helping her husband manage the family farm of rice, soybeans, grain sorghum, wheat, and cattle. She was often seen walking rice levies, transporting workers, feeding cattle, along with running her own accounting service business.
During hard times when money was short, she would organize a pecan harvest on the family farm’s native pecan grove to help supplement her own children’s Christmas, as well as the neighbors’ families. In her later years, she was able to have the time to fulfill a lifetime love of reading. She was of the Baptist faith.
She is survived by a brother, John Kenneth Black and his wife, Louise, of Lewisville; four children, Dan Dillard of Lewisville, David Dillard of Lewisville, Janet Wallace and her husband, Kenny Ray, of Haughton, La., and Pat Dillard and his wife, Sue Ellen, of El Dorado. She is also survived by three grandsons, Kyle Wallace, Kane Wallace, and John Dillard; and two granddaughters, Kacey Wallace Moore and Samantha Dillard Culwell; as well as five great-grandchildren.
Visitation with the family will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. today at the Smith Funeral Home in Stamps. Graveside services will be at 2 p.m. on Wednesday at the Walnut Hill Cemetery near Bradley.
Memorials may be made to St Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., or to the charity of the donor’s choice.