Eutelle Nix passed away peacefully in her sleep on Labor Day morning, September 4, 2022, at the age of 110 years. Born on her family’s farm, in Nicholson, Georgia, on April 22, 1912, to parents Estelle Kinney Wilson, and William Preston Wilson, she grew into an industrious, confident girl who could do most anything that needed to be done. She graduated from Martin Institute, Jefferson, Georgia, circa 1928. She married Joseph D. “Joe” Nix, in 1932, and made their first home in Commerce, where she worked in the Bluebell factory as a seamstress. During the war years they moved to Atlanta, where the couple eventually started a thriving business (“Paging Atlanta”) that provided users thousands of radio telephones and radio pagers, the immediate technology predecessor to the now ubiquitous cellular telephone.
The couple upon retirement returned to Jackson County, and lived on the old Nix farm on Duckett Road, in Apple Valley, where Joe was raised. They were members of the Apple Valley Baptist Church where Eutelle taught Sunday school. Eutelle particularly enjoyed gardening, using skills that she had learned on the farm. She and Joe produced amazing vegetable crops using irrigation waters pumped from the adjacent Oconee River. After Joe passed on in 1997, Eutelle remained self-sufficient on the farm, where neighbors reported spotting her on occasion trimming up in one of her trees, and running a bush-hog on her property even at age 100. Eutelle especially cherished her membership and many friends in the Jefferson Garden Club and the Apple Valley Baptist Church. After a significant fall in 2012, Eutelle lived with her son and daughter-in-law in South Carolina, and finally at Helena Place assisted living in Port Royal. SC.
Estelle loved Square Dancing and traveling to faraway places (China’s Great Wall and Hawaii) and she enjoyed tending her garden peas, butter beans, squash, and okra. She cherished her times spent picking blackberries with her grandchildren for pie and preserves, serving biscuits and peach ice cream on the screen porch at her house on Lake Lanier, reading the Atlanta Constitution each morning (especially Celestine Sibley’s column) and watching the Lawrence Welk show on Saturday nights.
Eutelle is survived by her son, Lamar Nix and his wife Alice of Seabrook, South Carolina, by her grandchildren Elizabeth Wilson (Stephen) of Roswell, Georgia, and Mary Caneer (Patrick) of Decatur, Georgia, and by her great grandchildren, Harrison Caneer and Alex Caneer of Decatur, Georgia, and Reece Wilson, and Riley Wilson of Roswell, Georgia. She dearly loved them all. Her husband, Joe Nix, died in 1997, and her daughter, Jo Anne Nix, died in 2012. Eutelle’s siblings, now deceased, were Averrie Wilson Bell, of Pendergrass, Georgia, George W. Wilson, of Nicholson, Georgia, Woodrow Wilson, of Commerce, Georgia, and Miram Vincent of Nicholson, Georgia.
In lieu of flowers a memorial contribution may be given in her honor to the Apple Valley Baptist Church, 4640 Commerce Road, Commerce, Georgia 30529.
A graveside service will be held at Apple Valley Baptist Church Cemetery at 10:45 Saturday, September 10, 2022. After the service the family will gather with friends in the Fellowship Hall for a celebration of Eutelle’s life.
Arrangements are in the care of Ivie Funeral Home, Commerce, GA.
