Shirley Pauline Benton was born on July 15th, 1936 as the the fourth child of Annie Bell Stroud Benton and Claude Benton Sr. She was a fiercely independent and creative child who grew to be a strong-willed woman with a curious nature. She stood up for right and wrong and defended the weak.
She worked hard in the cotton fields and on the farm with her family. Shirley was never held back by her circumstances. She waited tables in her youth, worked briefly at Jenkins Foods, and for over 40 years at PPG Industries of Shelby where she retired and after her retirement she did private nursing. Her thirst for knowledge often drove her and in her limited spare time she returned to education to learn a score of creative endeavors, including needle pointing, decoupage, flower arranging, quilting and sewing. She practiced many different healing arts including massage and body work techniques, painting and drawing, Touch for Health, Acupuncture, and a recent interest in Jin Shen Jyutsu. She loved reading all kinds of books and anything by Walter Mosley, and a well worn childhood favorite “The Secret Garden”.
Shirley was a gifted chef and baker whose cakes were often in demand and if she wished she could have filled orders from sun-up till sundown making perfect croissants, pita bread, cinnamon rolls, cookies, rum cakes, coconut cakes or orange pound cake, her brother’s favorite. Her nieces and nephews looked forward to her Christmas cheeseballs and blueberry salad (“purple yum-yum”) with a fierce delight. She was an avid wood carver, when she had a notion, and became quite good. People of every variety and category were drawn to Shirley even when they didn’t speak her language; her child-like nature and ready laugh made her friends from around the world and around the corner.
She loved to travel, even if it was to escape the oppressive heat of a Cleveland County summer by taking her mother, daughter and nephew to Asheville and renting “a room with air conditioning and pool just for a night!” Other trips included taking her niece on her first plane trip to Florida; traveling north to Philadelphia and Detroit to visit her beloved sisters; or visiting Cincinnati, Tennessee, DC or Washington state to hang with her cousins. She compiled a million travel stories, each more hilarious than the other. A natural actress, Shirley loved entertaining us all with those stories, and impersonations! She enjoyed talking about her soaps with her friends, and she held close the few precious friends who’d been with her since childhood. She enjoyed many films and became obsessed with “the child” becoming a firm fan of the Mandalorian.
She may not have liked the new technologies, but she threw herself into learning it. In her 80’s she had a memory like an elephant, she had become the receptacle of all the names and memories of our family, which we put to good use in the family’s bi-monthly genealogy meetings.
She was very proud of all of her family’s achievements especially her daughter and her siblings’ children and she bragged about their many accomplishments as if they were all her own kids. She was a strong heartbeat of the family, filled with love. She was the joy; she was the spark to light the way; one we never thought would dim so soon. She was Our Hummer Queen, sitting on her porch surrounded by her animal companions; her dogs, cats, hummingbirds & butterflies and whoever dropped in that day to laugh, talk and shoot the breeze, sharing a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade filled with herbs from her garden between them. Because wherever she may have traveled, home was always where her heart lay.
Shirley left us on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at her residence in Lawndale, NC with a lifetime of wonderful memories that we will forever cherish. Shirley is survived by her daughter. Sherri Toinette Benton (Kevin A. Krist) of Seattle, WA; sister, Mary Ann Pulliams of Detroit. MI; brother, Walter Benton (Frances) of Kingstown, NC; nieces, Caroline Kennedy and Valerie Kennedy both of Detroit and Sandra Benton of Sherman Oaks, CA; nephews, Roger Shade (Pat), of Shelby, NC, Jesse Kennedy of Southfield, MI, James Benton of Falls Church, VA, Darwin Kennedy of Detroit and Walter Benton Jr. (Shonda), Shelby; aunts, Lena Pounds (William) of Kingstown and Hazel Thomas ( June) of Lawndale and a host of other relatives and friends.
Funeral services will be held on Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 3:30 PM at S.T. Enloe Memorial Chapel. The family will receive friends from 3:00 PM until 3:30 PM on Saturday. Burial will take place at Cleveland Memorial Park. The service will be livestreamed starting at 3:15 PM from the Enloe Mortuary Face Book page. .
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