Margaret Eugenia Tatum's Obituary
Services for Margaret Eugenia Wright Tatum, 90, of Longview will be 10 AM Monday at First Presbyterian Church with Rev. Jonathan Jehorek officiating under direction of Rader Funeral Home. Entombment will follow in Rosewood Park Mausoleum.
Visitation at Rader Funeral Home will take place on Sunday, October 12, from 4 until 6 PM.
Mrs. Tatum died Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 11:30 PM at a local hospital.
Mrs. Tatum was born November 26, 1917 in Waxahachie, Texas. She was the daughter of James Logan Wright, Sr. of Decatur, Texas and Lola May Curlin of Otterville, Missouri.
She was educated in Waxahachie, at Trinity University where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Spanish in 1938. She later did her post graduate in counseling and guidance at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas in 1971. She was a teacher in the public school system in Texas for 1938 – 1943. The last job being in Gladewater, Texas where she met her late husband, Thaddeus Alto Tatum, Jr., who was also a teacher and band director at Gladewater High School.
Mrs. Tatum became co-owner of Tatum Music Co, Inc. in Longview and Tyler in 1948. Tatum Music Co. has been a very successful retail band instrument business and recently celebrated its 60th anniversary.
Mrs. Tatum had a passion for bridge and traveled to many tournaments through-out the country. The Goren Teachers Society certificate was presented to her as a Goren Associate Teacher in 1960; the American Contract League presented her with a Life Master Certificate in 1963. She told me once that she was the first person in East Texas to have the title of Life Master Duplicate Bridge Player.
She also had a passion for family history and became a certified genealogist, attending school in Washington, D. C. She also attended the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies in Kent, England to be certified in August 1983.
She became a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1969. she became a member of the National Society of the Colonial Dames XVII Century in 1977 and was vice-president from 1981 – 1983; a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution 1973 and chapter registrar from 1977 – 1979. She became a member of the National Society of Magna Charter Dames in 1981 which means a linear descendant of one or more of the Barons of England, in or before the year 1215. She became a member of the American Colonists and was the chapter Regent from 1981- 1983. She became a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 1974 and the National Society of the Daughters of the Colonial Dames of American Colonists in 1975. She was also a member of the Colonial Dames of America and the Gregg County Historical Society. She became a member of the Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia in 1975. She was a member of the Jamestown Society of Virginia. Her most recent membership includes The Ark and The Dove Society which is celebrating its centennial celebration in 2010, which proves you had an ancestor on the earliest boat of settlers to settle in Maryland in 1634.
Mrs. Tatum was inducted into the Who's Who of American Women, Twelfth edition in 1981-1982.
She has been a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Longview since she and her husband moved to Longview in 1948.
She had a love for travel and she and her husband took many trips throughout the world.
Margaret is survived by her daughter, Judith Wright Tatum Cabeen and her husband, Clayton Frederick, Jr. of Beaumont; her son, Thaddeus Alto Tatum, III and wife, Lisa Carol Tarrant of Plano. Four Grandchildren, William Robert Schrader, Jr. of Bay City, TX, Petty Officer Clayton Alto Cabeen of Saratoga Springs, NY, Adrienne Eugenia Cabeen of Beaumont, and William Thomas Tatum of Plano. And one great granddaughter, Meagan Taylor Schrader.
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