
Ms. Kathy Lewis age 72, was pronounced deceased at 11:07 a.m. Friday morning October 25, 2024 at the Highpoint Health – Riverview Emergency Room after being discovered unresponsive at Ms. Lewis’s Sunny View Lane home in the Tanglewood community.
Funeral services from the Carthage Chapel of Sanderson Funeral Home were conducted on Monday afternoon October 28th at 1 p.m.. Her pastor, Bro. Jonathan Rich officiated and long-time family friend, Wayne Winfree will provided the eulogy.
She was the youngest of four children, two daughters and two sons of the late former Smith County School Superintendent Homer Rogers Lewis who died March 4, 1978 at the age of 61 and Jessie Winfree Lewis who died April 4, 1981 also at the age of 61, and was born Kathy Neal Lewis in Carthage on the morning of April 11, 1952 at the family home in Brush Creek.
She was preceded in death by her eldest brother, Jerry Walter Lewis, then principal at Forks River Elementary, in 1970 and nephew, Christopher Todd Lewis, NP who died May 26, 2011 at the age of 45.
Ms. Lewis was a member of the 1970 graduating class at the Smith County High School where she majored in mathematics and Science. She was an outstanding basketball player, and her senior year was voted by her classmates as the most industrious girl.
She went on to pursue higher education, when in 1972, she graduated from Middle Tennessee State University with an Associate’s degree in Nursing. In 1985 she received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Tennessee Technological University and lastly, she received her Master of Science in Nursing from Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing in 1993.
Her nursing career spanned forty-eight years beginning as a nurse’s aide at the former Smith County Hospital in Carthage while still attending S. C. H. S. She went on to serve as a staff nurse at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville before starting at the former Carthage General Hospital where she eventually served as Director of Nursing. Kathy later became Chief Nursing Officer at the former Smith County Memorial Hospital and continued in the same role at what became Riverview Regional Medical Center. In addition to roles in Smith County, she also served as Chief Nursing Office at Bartow Memorial Hospital in Bartow, Florida and Director of Nursing at the Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute in Nashville, before finally retiring in 2016.
Ms. Lewis was baptized at the Cordell Hull Lake in the Sullivan’s Bend Community in February of 1983 and united with the Carthage Church of the Nazarene that same year. At the time of her death, she was a member and Steward on the church’s Board of Directors.
Surviving are her three sons, Steven Myers and wife Ruth Ann Watson Myers of the Buffalo Valley Community, Brandon Myers and wife Susan Rittenberry Myers of the Pea Ridge Community, Daniel Beechboard of Nashville; sister, Linda Lewis Beechboard and husband Sam of the Popes Hill Community; Roger Lewis of the Riddleton Community; three grandchildren, Avery, Adley, and Jake Myers.
The Lewis family has requested memorials to either, The Jordan Hackett Foundation or The Foundation for Academic Nursing at the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.