Daisy's Life Reflections

Daisy Mae Williams Manners was born on December 13, 1933, to Dave Williams and Lizzie Gray, the eldest of five children, four girls and one boy, all of whom went on before her. From the very beginning, hers was a life of going first: firstborn, first to leave home, first to show the way.

A Time to Learn...

Daisy's formal education began in the Jones Prairie community, where she was raised in large part by her grandmother until the ninth grade. Then, still a young girl, she did a brave thing: she moved to Cameron, rented a room in a house on 12th Street, and enrolled at O. J. Thomas. To pay her rent, she did domestic work, returning home every summer to earn the money for the next school year. She learned early what she would practice her whole life: that dignity is earned, and that hard work is its own kind of prayer.

A Time to Love...

On June 13, 1951, Daisy married Elmo Manners, a love that began, fittingly for a woman always in motion, at a track meet. To this union, four children were born: one daughter and three sons. She built her life around them, and nearly everything she did from that day forward, she did for family. As a grandmother, Daisy's playful side came shining through. She would sit her firstborn grandchild, Nichelle Roshone Jones, upon her lap, bouncing her gently and singing a little made-up song, “Soothie Luthie,” whose meaning remains a mystery to this day. It was pure Daisy: joy invented on the spot, love spoken in its own language.

A Time to Worship...

Faith was the thread that ran through every season of Daisy's life. As a child, she attended Harlan Chapel Baptist Church in Jones Prairie. When the family moved to Cameron from the Coxes Providence community, she joined Jerusalem Baptist Church. As her children grew, she joined Bethel A.M.E. Church, where they worshipped together as a family, their father beside them. And in her later years, she came full circle, returning to the Baptist church at Progressive Missionary Baptist, where she worshipped faithfully until her health began to fail. Wherever she lived, she found a church. Wherever she worshipped, she belonged.

A Time to Labor...

Daisy was not able to complete high school, but she did what she had always done she worked. She took a position in the kitchen at St. Edward Hospital. It was there, amid the rhythms of a healing place, that she heard a calling and decided to become a nurse, graduating in 1968. Not content to stop there, she went on to earn her GED. After brief periods at St. Edward's Hospital and the Colonial Nursing Home, she began a thirty-eight- year career as a Licensed Vocational Nurse with the Olin E. Teague Veterans Administration, part of more than forty years in nursing altogether. Along the way she earned various service awards, and upon her retirement the Department of Veterans Affairs honored her with a retirement award on September 30, 2010. She may have walked away from the job, but she never gave up the uniform. She wore it as part of her daily dress for the rest of her life. She considered herself a nurse to the very end. Beyond nursing, she sold life insurance, collected monthly dues for Dorsey-Keatts for many years, and on occasion helped grieving families through funeral services. Hers were hands that never stopped giving. Her spirit of service lives on in her children.

A Time to Say Good-Bye ...

In the hours before her passing, her family was able to gather at her side to share their love and appreciation, to say their goodbyes, and to give her permission to rest. On Thursday, October 15, 2026, at 6:30 p.m., Daisy received her wings from our Heavenly Father and flew away quietly to take her eternal rest, leaving behind a family, a community, and four generations who carry her strength in their bones. She was preceded in death by her husband, Elmo; her parents, Dave Williams and Lizzie Beal; three sisters, Zula Mae, Leola, and Norma Jean; one brother, Melvin; her son-in- law, Thomas Joseph Jones; and her grandchildren, Nichelle Roshone Jones and Charles Pemberton. 

Daisy leaves to cherish her memories: her daughter, Elmorine Manners Jones, widow of the late Thomas Joseph Jones; her sons, Jeffery Charles Manners and his wife, Stephanie, Stanley Earl Manners and his wife, Carol, and Jerry Wayne Manners; four living grandchildren, Kimberly Diane Jones, Lateef Pemberton, Ashley Elizabeth Manners Reed and her husband, Michael, and Douglas Earl Manners and his wife, Crystal; eight great- grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.