After a lifetime of service to others, pure faithfulness, love and total commitment to God and her family and friends, as well as an overwhelming devotion to the under-served and neglected, Retha Celeste Rogers Knight was called by name to go home to her Lord and Savior Tuesday, October 4, 2016.  Matthew 25:23 Her master replied, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"

A simple graveside service only will be held on Friday, October 7, 2016, at 11:00 a.m. at Memorial Gardens in Columbus, Mississippi, where she will be laid to rest next to her love.

Always a giving person, soft-hearted and compassionate, she spent 30 years (only the latter portion of her life) serving and volunteering at nursing homes in the community, doing nails, and hair when that was allowed, cleaning out residents' closets, and buying new things for residents in need to supplement their wardrobe or just little necessities. She would cry for them and pray for them.  She was a friend, champion and resident  advocate for hundreds of people over the years.

Retha met and married the love of her life, Edward Aubert Knight when he was just a young coach and teacher.  During their time together, she was a Navy wife, a teacher's wife, an administrator's wife, business owner and operator, secretary and of course, mother and grandmother.  They spent their early married years in San Diego when he was in the Navy before being shipped out during the Korean conflict.  We had an opportunity to take her back to visit those places just a few short years ago.

After the service, they came home to Lauderdale County as a teacher, where Howard came into their lives and changed their world.  As a new mom, she began a lifetime of support to her family and her husband as the Dean of Students at Scooba.  When the opportunity to continue moving upward in higher education came, they moved to Booneville, Mississippi, where Lisa and Scott were born and Aubert became the youngest junior college president in history at Northeast Mississippi Junior College.

After four years, the opportunity to get closer to home came in the form of Registrar at Mississippi State College for Women.  Through the tumultuous years, a name change, and the admittance of men, as well as Aubert's promotion to Executive Assistant to the President, Retha was always by his side, in support of him and the family home.  She spent many years at Merchants & Farmers Bank, owned and operated an Amway business, was a partner in a landscape company, started the Executive Coffee Service, and worked as the secretary for the Center for Special Children on the MUW campus under Dr. James Hunt.

A two-time breast cancer survivor herself, each event 10 years apart, Retha buried her husband of nearly 33 years after the discovery and a year of chemotherapy for bone cancer.

Life did not end there for Retha, but another chapter began.  She learned how to care for the meticulous landscaping that her husband spent untold hours in prior to his death.  That was her way of honoring him.  She was an avid card player, loved to get together with her friends on a regular basis and visit, was on a bowling league for many years, and had a wall full of ribbons from participating in the Senior Olympics. She helped to raise some of her grandchildren and, in more recent years, a great-grandchild came along and gave her a new card-playing buddy! She lived for the days that all her children and grandchildren would come visit at her home.

She was a faithful member of Wesley United Methodist Church and then Fairview Baptist Church.  Retha loved her Lord and was in service to His children all to His glory.

Retha was born on June 10, 1930, to the late Bennie and Lillie Temple Rogers.   She was the last of her siblings; Ruth Spivey, Eliot Rogers, Sybil Blackwell, Novella Joyner, Russell Rogers, and Undine Jones.

Retha leaves behind three children, Howard (June) Knight, South Padre Island, Texas, Lisa (Mitch) Lawrence, Columbus, Mississippi, and Scott (Lisa) Knight, Woodstock, Georgia; six grandchildren – Carly (Lewis) Lyons, Chance Knight, Daran (Virginia) Chism, Jennifer Chism (Joe Price), Patrick Knight, Allison Knight; and one great-grandchild Andrew Chism.

Many, many thanks to all of the nurses, CNAs, aids, staff, therapy staff, activities directors, beauticians, part-time, full-time, and everyone at Trinity Healthcare… She was not supposed to be anywhere else.  She was home at Trinity and where she had always said she wanted to be. Most remembered her from her volunteer work and she was always treated with the utmost respect.  Special thanks to Debra Pannell and Rachel Whitmire for your friendship, support, laughter, untold hours of text and phone calls, tears and love.

Though she loved flowers, she was an avid and generous supporter of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and kept pictures of their children on her refrigerator right alongside her family and wished for donations to be made in lieu of flowers.