Odette May

With profound sadness, we announce the passing of Odette Minson May, our loving and devoted mother, grandmother and friend to all those whose lives she touched, on May 22, 2025. She left us while sleeping peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones in Mertens, Texas. She was eighty-nine years old. Graveside services will take place at 10:00 AM, Thursday, May 29, 2025, at Richland Cemetery in Mertens. A visitation will be held from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, Wednesday, May 28, 2025, at Marshall and Marshall Funeral Directors in Hillsboro.

She was born September 23, 1935, in Houston, Texas. Odette met her loving husband, James D. May (career U.S. Navy) and they traveled across seas the Panama Canal Zone. They later traveled to Bellevue, Nebraska, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia and Milton, Florida before finally retiring back home to Mertens, Texas.

As their children grew older, she found work as an auditor for Sears in Virginia and later in Florida in charge of Certificates of Deposit in a bank. She attended Pensacola Junior College, studying banking. She also took banking classes at college in Mobile, Alabama. When she moved back to Texas, she worked as an office manager in Dr. Robles' office and in Italy Convalescent Center in Italy, Texas. She alter worked in human resources at Renfro Nursing Home in Waxahachie, Texas. She retired in 2005, at the age of seventy.

She lived a full life as a wonderful mother, mentor and dedicated employee. Odette loved to garden, sew and crochet anything and everything for her children and grandchildren. She was highly skilled in drawing, painting and crafts of all kinds and adored animals and wildlife (especially hummingbirds). Odette loved to bake for her family, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She had a green thumb and could grow anything and loved to tend her plants and her garden. Odette lived in the kitchen and cooked up a storm for her famous family gatherings. Even at eighty-nine, she was still chopping up vegetables and giving directions to her sixty-nine-year-old cook. Most of all, she loved her family and friends and instilled good values in her children and grandchildren that have served them well. She will be dearly missed and forever in our hearts.

Odette was the beloved mother of Dianna Phillips (Italy), James May, Jr. (Italy), Deborah Johnson (Maybank), and Dwayne May-Aubrey (Frost); proud grandmother of thirteen grandchildren, Amber, Jimmy, Nathan, David, Brandie, Chrystal, Joseph, Samuel, Ashley, Lisa, Christoher, Don and Daniel; proud great-grandmother of twenty-four great-grandchildren; and proud great-great-grandmother of ten great-great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her loving husband, James D. May; her parents, Thelma and George Wilson Minson; her sister, Wilma Kunetka; brother, Bill Minson; and her daughters, Doris Lynn(Houston) and Darlene Lynette Cato (Frost).

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Paw Pals in Hillsboro or any no-kill shelter near you. All shelters need cash or canned food (for older animals that cannot chew), as well as paper towels and laundry soap. Odette wanted these gifts given in remembrance of hero own, dear "Emma."