08/03/2026
Norris Electric Cooperative joins our community in remembering Mary, a longtime member. Mary and her husband Wendell had been members since November 17, 1950, nearly 76 years.
We were honored to celebrate Mary each year as our oldest and longest-serving member. Our thoughts are with Mary’s family. Please take a moment to read about her remarkable life in the obituary below.
Mary Laughead, 112, formerly of Palestine, IL, passed away on Monday, July 27, 2026, at Carle Richland Memorial Hospital in Olney, IL. She was born Mary Amelia Burkett on May 3, 1914, in the Heathsville area of Crawford County, delivered by a country doctor who made his rounds on foot, by buggy, and sometimes on horseback. Mary came into a world that still moved at the pace of a horse, and she spent the next century watching it change.
She grew up on the family dairy farm, and she and her brother worked it the way farm children did in those days, doing things that needed doing whether they were big enough for the job or not. She drove the horse-drawn sickle-bar mower before she was tall enough to sit on the seat, holding on for dear life instead. She led the horses, handled the sled, and rode a horse named Prince down muddy Purgatory Road to school, turning him loose at the gravel to find his own way home. It was the kind of childhood that made a person capable, and capable was something Mary stayed for the rest of her days.
She graduated from Palestine High School in 1932 and set off for Central Business College in Indianapolis to learn typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping, boarding with a family and helping raise their daughter to earn her keep. Jobs were scarce in the depths of the Depression, but Mary found one with Phoenix Insurance, taking down the agents' letters and sending them out, always knowing how to reach each one. She lived in the city for years, boarding with an elderly couple for five dollars a week and eating her meals out. For a girl raised riding horses through the back country, a train ride to the city and a walk down Washington Street after dark was nothing to fear.
During the war, she was encouraged to write to some of the local boys serving in the military. She had known Wendell Laughead all her life, so she wrote to him, and the letters came back right away. On December 28, 1946, they married. Mary returned home to Palestine to keep house and farm alongside her husband, supporting him on the land whenever she could. They were married nearly fifty years before Wendell died in 1995. They had no children, but their life together was full and busy and lived in the place they both loved.
That full and busy life left plenty of room for work, and Mary never turned it down. When her cousin Kent Burkett needed someone to fill in at his Palestine insurance office, she stepped in, and when the position came open, she took it for good. Even though she busied herself farming and working, Mary still gave a great deal of her life to others. She quilted at Grace United Methodist Church, volunteered at the Methodist home in Lawrenceville and at the Palestine First Presbyterian Church, where she was a member. Even while wintering in Florida, she volunteered at the local hospital. At the age of 82, she began volunteering at the Palestine Library, where for years it was not unusual to see her pushing a loaded book cart or down on her knees shelving books.
She outlived nearly everyone she had loved, and she never took her long life for granted. "I have had an eventful life and made a lot of mistakes," she once said. "I am grateful for the things I can do." And a little more plainly, closer to the heart of it: "I have done a lot of things, but have had 100 years to do them in." By the end, she had been given a dozen more.
She has earned her rest. Mary's long road always led home, and now it has led her the rest of the way.
She was preceded in death by her husband of nearly 50 years, Wendell Laughead; her parents, Hugh & Lulu (Duncan) Burkett; and her brother, Kenneth Burkett. She is survived by her nephew, Lyle (Sue) Laughead; and by her great-nieces, Carrie (Brian) Miller and their family and Kiva (Matt) Vaughn and their family.
A time of visitation will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 1st, at the Goodwine Funeral Home in Palestine. Funeral services will immediately follow at 12:00 p.m., with Celebrant Curt Goodwine officiating. Memorials may be made to the "Palestine Public Library", with envelopes available at the funeral home. Burial will be in the Palestine Cemetery.
