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Submitted: 2/13/25 • Approved: 2/15/25 • Last Updated: 2/18/25 • R1555200-G1555200-S3
Apr 24, 1937 - Feb 8, 2025
Mary Phoebe Bethany Underwood, 87, died Saturday, February 8, 2025. She was born April 24, 1937, in DeKalb, Miss., the only child of Hardin “Jesse” and Alice Nye Bethany. She would go on to graduate from Mississippi State University and spend her working life as a Registered Medical Technologist in hospital blood banks.
She became officially cool to her son the day she came home from work and announced that she had done the bloodwork on the first gorilla born at the Albuquerque Zoo. Years later, when that kid turned 30, she carried a non-stowable heavenly hash cake in her lap for 16 hours to deliver, unannounced, to his Peace Corps assignment in the middle of the Pacific.
She let her daughter be herself and once drove eight girls from a slumber party to TP the quarterback’s house, then U-turned to negotiate the release of one culprit caught by the quarterback’s dad. Such acceptance continued into adulthood, acknowledging that child would never learn to cook when she asked what a cheese grater looked like and ordered pizza for Christmas dinner when Phoebe visited her in Chicago.
Among her maxims was, “It matters how you make other people feel.” She and her former husband Billy opened their home to more than a dozen foster kids (one painted the walls of his room black; another became a successful patent lawyer), ex-prison inmates trying to start over and Vietnam War refugees (on their first trip to a supermarket, she calmly explained with a lot of gesturing that the smiling infant on the baby food label did not indicate what was inside the jar).
She moved to Little Rock in 2009 to watch her only grandchild grow up and eventually teach her to drive. She was briefly a volunteer teacher at the women’s prison in Wrightsville. If you asked for more details, they’d be few and she’d ask, instead, what you were doing with your life. Then she’d listen.
Her favorite poem was Amy Lowell’s “Patterns.” Her favorite tunes were Roy Orbison’s. She rooted for Joe Burrow and Caitlin Clark and against, at first, Dallas, then New England, and, lately Kansas City — basically against anybody who was winning too much.
Survivors are the father of her children, Billy of Jackson, Miss.; her children, Amy and Graham and his wife Olimpia; and her granddaughter Cordelia, all of Little Rock; and an adopted daughter, Susan Caskey (Jeff) of Albuquerque, N.M.
The family would like to thank our team at Arkansas Hospice and our friends at Tanglewood Drug.
At Phoebe’s request, there will be no services, though a memorial is in the works for later. Memorial donations may be made to Cornell Ornithology (www.birds.cornell.edu) or Our House (https://ourhouseshelter.org)
Arrangements by A Natural State Funeral Service 2620 West Main Street, Jacksonville, Arkansas 72076. 501-982-3400. Online guestbook available at www.anaturalstatefuneralservice.com
Contributed on 2/13/25 by eagle12953
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Record #: 1555200