To request a copy of this photo for your own personal use, please contact our state coordinator. If you are not a family member or the original photographer — please refrain from copying or distributing this photo to other websites.
Thank you for visiting the Arkansas Gravestone Photo Project. On this site you can upload gravestone photos, locate ancestors and perform genealogy research. If you have a relative buried in Arkansas, we encourage you to upload a digital image using our Submit a Photo page. Contributing to this genealogy archive helps family historians and genealogy researchers locate their relatives and complete their family tree.
Submitted: 2/23/16 • Approved: 2/26/16 • Last Updated: 6/30/23 • R1124670-G0-S3
PRIVATE US Army Air Forces
March 8, 1920 - March 5, 2011
Ennis Franklin Sutherlin, 90, of El Dorado, died March 5, 2011. He was born
March 8, 1920, in Naborton, Louisiana, to the late Katherine Elizabeth Webb and Ennis Byron Sutherlin.
He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Mittie Atkins Sutherlin and their children: Paul Mark Sutherlin of El Dorado, Donna Kay Sutherlin of Atlanta, and Diann Sutherlin Smith and her husband Craig of Little Rock; seven grandchildren: Quentin Smith and Blair Smith of Little Rock, Lindsey Smith of New York City, Jessica Duffy and Morgan Pelligrino of Atlanta, Georgia, Matthew Sutherlin of Baltimore, Maryland, and Brooke Martin of Nacogdoches, Texas; and a great grandson, Aiden Sutherlin.
Ennis was predeceased by siblings Richard Douglas (Dick), George William (G.W.), Erma Beatrice Porter, Artie Ruthe Kelley and Claire Belle Keene. He is survived by his fraternal twin Ernest Webb Sutherlin of El Dorado. As boys, the twins were given the nicknames “Little Boy” and “Big Boy,” in reference to the height difference. Though “Little Boy” was a nickname Ennis disliked, it nevertheless stuck with him for a lifetime.
Ennis Sutherlin spent his early years in Norphlet, Arkansas, where his father was a successful grocer and once served as mayor in the 1930s. The family moved to El Dorado while Ennis was still a boy. He often told stories of climbing oil derricks and swimming in the Norphlet Crater (the aftermath of a sunken well that filled with water over time). One of his fellow “crater crickets,” as he dubbed them, was his childhood friend, the late architect Fay Jones.
Ennis enlisted in the Army a few weeks after Pearl Harbor and served in the Air Corps until his honorable discharge in October, 1945. He often recalled his time spent stationed around the Panama Canal Zone “peeling potatoes” and delighted in sharing the Spanish words he picked up during his service there. Ennis was a proud veteran and active member of the VFW. He and Mittie were members of the First Baptist Church.
After the war, he returned to El Dorado where he met and married the love of his life, Mittie Atkins, a vivacious young beautician. After stints in Ft. Worth, Pine Bluff and Crossett, they returned to El Dorado. “We didn’t have enough money to put a down payment on a hot dog,” he often said. With three young children to raise, Ennis and Mittie decided to go into business for themselves. In 1958 they opened a mom and pop grocery store on West Hillsboro, first called Sutherlin’s Grocery then later christened The Razorback Market. They operated the store for 38 years.
When Ennis retired, he found a new passion — vegetable gardening. His friends and neighbors were often the happy recipients of bags of turnip greens or collards — already washed — which showed up unexpectedly hanging in a plastic bag on their front doorknobs. He continued working the garden well into his 80s, seemingly oblivious to the noon-day sun and the tenacious fire ants.
At the age of 83, he enrolled in a Beginning Spanish class at South Arkansas Community College and rekindled his interest in the language. He followed up with Spanish II, and eagerly exercised his conversational Spanish whenever the opportunity presented itself. Although his formal education ended after the eighth grade, he valued education and learning. He was a voracious reader and possessed great intellectual curiosity. He was smart, generous, funny, kind, energetic, cantankerous, unpredictable, impulsive, philosophical. He was a great storyteller. His older sister Erma once described him fondly as “a hog on ice” because you never knew which was he was headed next. It was an apt description.
He loved bass fishing and baseball. He loved the music of Perry Como, Ray Charles, the operatic tenor of Mario Lanza and the big band sound of Glenn Miller. He had a lovely voice and was a skilled whistler. Sky blue was his favorite color — it matched his eyes. He loved a rare T-bone and any dessert as long as it was topped with ice cream. He enjoyed tracking the journeys of his adventurous grandchildren on a world map he kept displayed in the den.
He was a complicated man. He read philosopher William James and anthropologist Desmond Morris. He never professed to know the answers but he was not afraid to ask the questions. He was a seeker. His favorite quote was from director John Huston. He laminated it and kept it in his wallet:
The truth is I don't profess any beliefs in an orthodox sense. It seems to me that the mystery of life is too great, too wide, too deep, to do more than wonder at. Anything further would be, as far as I'm concerned, an impertinence.
Memorials may be made to Alzheimer’s Arkansas, 10411 West Markham, Suite 130, Little Rock, AR 72205-1409.
Visitation will be held at Young’s Funeral Home Monday, March 7, from 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. A private graveside service will follow at Arlington Cemetery, officiated by Brother Lynn Worthen.
www.youngsfuneralhome.com.
Contributed on 2/23/16 by debbraszymanski
Email This Contributor
Suggest a Correction
Record #: 1124670