Margaret Henry

Margaret B. Henry

Margaret Brewer Henry died on New Year’s Day 2023 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Columbus, Mississippi. Two months earlier she had celebrated her 95 th birthday.

Mrs. Henry was born in Miami, Florida to Bryan and Helen Toomey Brewer of London, Kentucky and Washington, Georgia, respectively. She attended Palm Beach Junior College in Florida and was graduated from Agnes Scott College and Emory University in Atlanta in 1949.

Mrs. Henry enjoyed a career in journalism before and after her marriage to John Robertson Henry of Columbus. She was the assistant news editor of the Atlanta Suburban Reporter in East Point, Georgia and then joined the staff of the International News Service in Atlanta, later moving to Washington as an INS correspondent during President Eisenhower’s administration.

Mrs. Henry became the first Woman’s Editor of the State Times, which began publication in Jackson, Mississippi in 1955. For many years she was a columnist and free-lance writer for The Birmingham News, Southern Living magazine and The Post, a monthly magazine printed in Columbus in the early 1960s.

For 13 years Mrs. Henry worked in Public Information at Mississippi State College for Women, later Mississippi University for Women – initially as a writer, retiring in 1983 as director. She was named Practitioner of the Year by the Columbus chapter of PRAM (Public Relations Association of Mississippi), chosen as Woman of the Year by Mississippi Press Women in 1975, and given the Silver Inky award that same year by the journalism department at MUW. Her news and feature stories won first places in the annual Mississippi Press Women’s competitions. Mrs. Henry served as regional vice president for Women in Communications and directed the student chapter at MUW.

After the 1978 death of her husband, a former journalist who for more than two decades was president of Merchants and Farmers Bank (now Trustmark National Bank), Mrs. Henry served as a director of M & F. She was the first female bank director in Columbus. She also was a longtime member of the board of directors of the Young Men’s Christian Association (the “Y”) in Columbus. She was a past president of the Columbus branch of the American Association of University Women.

Mrs. Henry was a lifetime member of the Columbus Junior Auxiliary. She wrote historical scripts for two pilgrimage pageants, one based on the 1858 disaster involving the Tombigbee River steamboat Eliza Battle. She also served a term as chairman of the Junior Auxiliary Publicity Committee and was president of associate members.

She was a charter member of the Pink Ladies for the Golden Triangle Regional Medical Center (now Baptist Memorial Hospital). She was also a charter member of the Main Street program in Columbus and the local chapter of Soroptimist International. She served on the Military Affairs Committee of the Columbus-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce. Mrs. Henry was inducted into the Society of Corpus Cordis Aureum, which celebrates Emory University alumni who graduated 50 or more years ago.

A member of Annunciation Catholic Church for almost seven decades, Mrs. Henry co-authored with her husband a short history of the parish for the church’s centennial in 1963. She was especially devoted to praying the Rosary.

Mrs. Henry was an intrepid traveler. Often traveling with her daughter, Margaret Mary, she visited all seven continents.

In her late fifties and sixties Mrs. Henry and her beloved West Highland terrier, Silas McBee, were a familiar sight on their afternoon walks around downtown Columbus. A lover of pretty clothes, she began doing Pilates to stay in shape and in her final decade became a star on the Pilates reformer at Fitness Factor.

Although she hated to cook, she loved a good party and was known for entertaining fellow guests with vivid, often humorous episodes from her life or tales of Columbus past.

Mrs. Henry enjoyed music. She and her husband had courted in Atlanta while dancing to 1940s ballads and Big Band tunes. Her favorite song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

On the ninth day of Mrs. Henry’s hospitalization after a fall, a double rainbow appeared over Columbus, its arc rising above the street where she had lived since 1955. Three mornings later, on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, she died of complications from pneumonia.

Mrs. Henry was preceded in death by her husband, three of their children who died shortly after birth, and by her eldest grandchild, Emily Henry Mackin.

She is survived by her daughter, Margaret Mary Henry of Columbus, and sons John R. Henry, Jr. of Jackson, Miss., Patrick Taylor Henry of Washington, D.C. and Bryan Henry of Tuscaloosa, as well as grandchildren Mary Henry Walker (Daniel) of Brandon, Miss., Taylor Henry (Katie) of Durham, N.C., Natalie Henry of New Orleans, Anna Magdeleine Henry of Ocean Springs, Miss, Laura Grace Henry of Tuscaloosa., and great-grandson, Theodore James Walker, (Teddy), of Brandon, MS.

On Friday, Jan. 6 visitation will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Annunciation Catholic chapel, followed by a Rosary service at 6:30. Visitation on Saturday, Jan. 7 begins at 9 a.m. in the Annunciation main church, with the funeral service there at 11 a.m.

Memorials may be sent to Annunciation Catholic School in Columbus or to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.