Graveside services for Rachel Snead Hunt, 92, of Decatur will be Monday, June 29, 2015, at 11 a.m. at Burningtree Memorial Gardens with the Rev. Dr. Hughey Reynolds officiating and Roselawn Funeral Home directing.
Mrs. Hunt, who died Tuesday, June 23, 2015, at Decatur Morgan Hospital, was born December 24, 1922, to Herndon Graham Snead and Nancy Morrison Winkle Snead in Knoxville, TN. She served three years active duty in the United States Marine Corps. She was a teletype operator and a parachute rigger and was stationed at Lakehurst, N.J. and at Parris Island, S.C. She attended college on the G.I Bill and was one of the first women of her generation to do so. She graduated from Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham with a B.A. in sociology. She also attended law school at the University of Alabama for two years. Mrs. Hunt was a member of the Garden Club, the American Auxiliary of University Women, the Aircraft Owner’s and Pilot’s Association and the 99’s, a women’s only pilot’s association.
She was a remarkably independent and accomplished woman. She learned how to fly a plane before she could drive a car and was able to take classes in flying on the G.I. Bill. She used to laugh that they had to practice spins, stalls and rolls over the river, just in case. She once flew from Birmingham to Chattanooga by following the painted roofs of barns along the way. She obtained her Private Pilot’s license and Instrument Rating and logged hundreds of hours in a Cessna 172. She was an artist whose accomplishments included sewing, painting, ceramics, photography, darkroom and sculpture. She made ceramic dolls as a hobby and dressed them in the hand made inaugural gowns of the First Ladies.
She was preceded in death by her parents; a sister, Elizabeth Cowan Shue; brothers, Graham Andrew Snead, William Carson Snead and Judson Abercrombie Snead and her husband of 60 years, Albert C. Hunt, M.D.
She is survived by two daughters, Rebecca Hunt Reynolds and her husband, Dr. Gary Reynolds of Tampa, FL and Nancy Elizabeth Hunt-Klinksiek and her husband, Dr. Stephen Klinksiek of Santa Fe County, New Mexico; one sister, Mary Esther Parker of Tampa, FL; and three grandchildren, Alexis Griffiths of Flagstaff, AZ, Matthew Reynolds of Las Vegas, NM, Nathan Reynolds of Tampa, FL and her beloved Peter, the Pekingese.
Honorary pallbearers will be Alton Brooks Parker of Tampa, FL, Jim Thaxton, Wayne Wagnon and Dr. Jolly McKenzie.
Memorials may be made to the First United Methodist Church or the Animal Humane Society.
