Carolyn Preuit Fennel passed away on July 8, 2014, following a brief illness. Services will be held Friday, July 11, at the United Methodist Church in Leighton at 4 p.m. The Rev. Burl Lee Oliver and Keith Russell will officiate. Following burial at King Cemetery, the family will receive friends at the Fennel home near Leighton.
A lifelong resident of Leighton, Carolyn graduated from Colbert County High School where she was a cheerleader. She attended Ward-Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee and Auburn University where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. On Aug. 8, 1952, she was united in marriage to Benjamin King Fennel Jr. at the Leighton United Methodist Church. The Fennels settled in Leighton and reared three sons.
During her lifetime, Carolyn was active in the Muscle Shoals District Service League and graciously contributed her time to the Tennessee Valley Art Center, the Ritz Theatre, and the Leighton Public Library as well as the Leighton United Methodist Church where she was a lifelong member. Of particular joy to Carolyn was spending time with her friends in the Sewing Club and Les Bonnes Vivantes. She was a gracious hostess who loved to entertain family and friends in her home and was always the first to see that a gourmet meal was delivered to a family in a time of need.
In 1940, Carolyn’s father, Gordon Preuit, and his business partner, James Curtis Fennel, purchased the Belle Mont Plantation near Tuscumbia. In 1983, Carolyn joined her husband and sisters-in-law, Judy Fennel Vials and Maude Preuit Fennel, in donating the historic Belle Mont Mansion and surrounding grounds to the Alabama Historical Commission, thus preserving one of the Deep South’s finest examples of Palladian architecture. By way of her mother and father, Carolyn was a descendant of Northwest Alabama’s earliest pioneer families who, in the early 1800s, settled in the eastern region of what is now Colbert County. Her family also has ancestral ties to early settlers in Quitman and Coahoma Counties in the Mississippi Delta.
Carolyn was preceded in death by her husband, Benjamin King Fennel Jr., her son, Benjamin King Fennel III, her parents, Martha Lelita King and Gordon Preuit, her brother, Richard Gordon Preuit, and her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Sarah Lile and Benjamin King Fennel Sr.
She is survived by her son, Mark Lile Fennel; her son, Gordon Preuit Fennel and his wife, Elizabeth Thompson Fennel; her grandchildren, Katherine King Fennel and Benjamin Thomas Fennel; and her sisters-in-law, Rosemary Roberson Preuit, Judy Fennel Vials, and Patricia Hamilton Fennel.
Active pallbearers will be Roger Maxwell Bradford, Howell Thomas Heflin Jr., Fred Benjamin King, Edward Fennel Mauldin Jr., Leonard Preuit Mauldin, Macke Buchanan Mauldin, Albert Stephen Naughton Jr., Richard Gordon Preuit Jr., James Fennel Speake, and Hilard Elbert Whitlock III.
Honorary pallbearers will be James Dale Ashmore, Gregg Preuit Blythe, John Brooks Bowling, Charles Elmore Carmichael, Laurence Cothran Carmichael, Raymond Leon Fitzgerald, James Walker Jeffreys, L.C. Jeffreys, Paul Russell Jeffreys, James Edward Jones, Paul Everett Jones III, Charles Cooper King, James Briscoe King, Robert Lemuel Layton III, Federick Terral Marthaler Jr., Albert Stephen Naughton Sr., H. Marion Perritt, William Earl Roper, John Banks Sewell, Henry Curtis Spangler Jr., Peter Jerome Vials, Joseph Murray Ware, and Frontis S. Winford.
Memorials may be made to the following organizations that were dear to Carolyn or to
:
Leighton United Methodist Church, P.O. Box 502, Leighton, AL 35646,
Tennessee Valley Art Center, P.O. Box 474, Tuscumbia, AL 35674,
Leighton Public Library, P.O. Box 484, Leighton, AL 35646, or
Colbert County Historical Landmarks Foundation for the Belle Mont Fund, 106 North Dickson Street, Tuscumbia, AL 35674.
Morrison Funeral Home, Tuscumbia, is assisting with arrangements.
