Obituary of Katie Breckenridge McGee

Mrs. Katie Breckenridge McGee, age 92, went to join the angels on Sunday, May 17, 2015. Visitation will be conducted in the chapel of Holman Funeral Home in Ozark, from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 21, 2015. Funeral services will be at the First United Methodist Church, downtown Ozark, Alabama, at 10:00 o'clock a.m. in the morning of Friday, May 22, 2015, with Reverend Mike Sigler and Reverend Dr. Billy D. Gaither. After the funeral service at the church, burial will be in Westview Memorial Cemetery, Holman Funeral Home and Cremations of Ozark directing. She was born on March 23, 1923, to John James and Kate Parten Breckenridge, in Nanafalia, Alabama, a town on the east bank of the Tombigbee River. Her parents and all her six brothers and sisters resided generally in west Alabama, and all are deceased. She has many nieces and nephews surviving her, most of whom live in western Alabama. Young Katie Breckenridge grew up and was educated in the western counties and towns of Alabama, and when World War Two started she enlisted in the U. S. Navy as a WAVE. She received Navy training in a college in New York City, and in Navy training facilities in Tennessee and other states. When her training was complete she was transferred to a Naval Air Base in Corpus Christi, Texas, where she served as an operator of testing machines on Navy aircraft engines. When the war ended in 1945, two and a half years later, she was honorably discharged from the Navy, and she promptly enrolled as a freshman at the University of Alabama. She chose the school of education and the course of Home Economics--(although most of her later teaching career was with elementary school students.) In February of 1947 she met her husband to be--Val L. McGee, who has survived her--at a dance in Foster Auditorium, at the University of Alabama. Val McGee had returned from military service in Europe in the summer of 1946, and had enrolled in the Law School at the University of Alabama. After a whirlwind courtship the couple was married on July 19, 1947 in a memorable church service in Tuscaloosa. Both Katie and Val completed their college courses in May of 1949, and they moved to Ozark, Alabama--where Val's married sister Dorothy (Glenn) Wells was living. Katie taught school in the Ozark and Dale County schools until 1985, except for eight years when she took a sabattical leave to raise her two beloved children, Mary Elizabeth McGee Brooks, now in Houston, Texas; and John Breckenridge McGee, now in Birmingham, Alabama. Three grandchildren also survive: Allison Brooks (Jeff) Edwards, Andrew Brooks, and Rachel Kate McGee, a recent Birmingham High School graduate. Dorothy and Glenn Wells were both pre-deceased. Katie and Val both loved Ozark and Dale County from the start, and over the years Val wrote and published two local history books which were given to the local library, together with a history of the First United Methodist Church. Val retired after a career as a trial judge in Dale County. Flowers are welcome, or memorials may be made to the Alzheimer's Resource Center, P. O. Box 1170, Dothan, Alabama 36302; Community Hospice of Dale Medical Center, 126 Hospital Avenue, Ozark, Alabama 36360; or to Westview Memorial Cemetery Association, P. O. Box 484, Ozark, Alabama 36361. Service Information