Edna Smith Bowen Colquitt died peacefully in her sleep on Saturday, October 27, 2007, at her Langdale Place residence in Valdosta. She was 96. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 30, in the Memorial Chapel of Tifton's First
Baptist Church. The service will be conducted by her nephew Dr. John B. Polhill of Kentucky and Dr. Wayne Roe of Tifton with burial to follow in the Bowen family plot in Oak Ridge Cemetery.
Mrs. Colquitt was born on November 9, 1910 in Tifton to the late Enoch Piercel Bowen and Elizabeth Turner Bowen. She was the youngest and final survivor of three brothers and five sisters. Mrs. Colquitt graduated from Tifton High School and Bessie Tift College in Forsyth with a degree in speech. After a summer at Columbia University, she taught High School English in Thomaston, during the early years of the Great Depression. In Thomaston, she met her future husband, Adrian, whom friends and family knew as “Honey” Colquitt.
Mr. and Mrs. Colquitt and their only child, Camille, moved to Tifton in 1948, where Edna became a key community player. She was a longstanding member of the Azalea Garden Club, the Colonial Dames, and the Tallahassee Chapter of the DAR. As a volunteer, she was proudest of her contributions to the First Baptist Church, which she served as a Sunday school teacher for fifty years.
Her volunteerism competed with her professionalism when, in 1958, she joined the recreational faculty at ABAC, where she signed on to teach ABAC students every plausible application of a concept which was foreign to many: etiquette. After teaching, she worked in the public relations department of ABAC until her retirement.
Survivors include her daughter, Camille Colquitt Peeples of Valdosta; grandsons Henry William "Bill Peeples, III and his wife, Janine, of Valdosta: John Colquitt Peeples and his wife, Jane, of Valdosta; and great-grandchildren William Benjamin McKinley Peeples, Mary Lawrence Peeples, and Alexandra Bowen Peeples, all of Valdosta and brother-in-law James A. Colquitt and his wife, Betty, of Marietta. Mrs. Colquitt also leaves a host of nephews and nieces and their descendants, most of whom knew her well and revere her memory.
Donations may be made to the First Baptist Church in Tifton.