SPARTANBURG - Verna Lee Hicks Pressley died Monday, July 14, 2008, at Hospice Home in Spartan- burg.

She was the second of 13 children born to Joseph Grayson and Bessless Ware Hicks of Kings Mountain, N.C. She attended North Carolina public schools, but left school early to work and assist in the raising of her younger siblings.

She married William Odell Pressley, and in the 1940s became a U.S. Army wife when Odell volunteered for military service. For four years, during World War II, Odell was deployed to North Africa, Italy and Germany. Some years after the war, she became the devoted and loving mother of their only child, William Odell Pressley Jr. She and Odell farmed property in Cherokee County, S.C., working hard to provide a college and law school education for their son at USC in Columbia. Most of her adult life, she was a member of Blacksburg First Baptist Church; prior to that, she was a member of Antioch Baptist Church.

She will be greatly missed by her surviving siblings, Mary Ruth Hicks Allison of Charlotte, N.C., Bob Hicks of Des Moines, Iowa, Melba Hicks Hemmings of Winston Salem, N.C., Jack Hicks of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Shirley Hicks Adams of Spartanburg; her many nieces and nephews, and especially her son and daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Melton Pressley, and grandchildren, Samantha Lee Pressley and William Melton Pressley of Spartanburg. She shared with them all her compassion and loving kindness and taught her family to love God's beauty in nature and each other.

A Celebration of Life service will be held Saturday, July 19, 2008, at 9 a.m. graveside at Clingman Memorial Gardens, Blacksburg, with the Revs. Sal Barone and William Adams officiating. The family will receive friends immediately following services at the cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the charity of one's choice.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by White Columns Funeral Home of Blacksburg.