VIRGINIA BYRD

SIKESTON -- Funeral service for Virginia Byrd of Sikeston will be held at 2 p.m. today at Ponder Funeral Chapel. The Rev. Preston Palmer will officiate, with burial in Mounds Park Cemetery at Lilbourn.

Friends may call at the funeral home from 10 a.m. to noon.

Byrd, 76, died Monday, April 15, 1996, at Missouri Delta Medical Center.

She was born May 15, 1919, in Sikeston, daughter of William Franklin and Etta Barnett Henley. She married James L. Byrd, who died Aug. 6, 1970.

Byrd was a member of East Side Nazarene Church.

Survivors include two sons, James Byrd of Sikeston, David Byrd of Bloomfield; four daughters, Delores Byrd and Imogene Gaines of Sikeston, Sandy Gaines of Dexter, Lavonne Gosnell of Chaffee; a brother, Robert Henley of Sikeston; five sisters, Pauline Limbaugh, Camille Hawkins and Loretta Stephenson of Sikeston, Ruby Triplett of Essex, Vera Freeman of Sacramento, Calif.; four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by a sister and two brothers.