Shirley Mae Pyatt

Services for Shirley Mae Pyatt, 93, of Tyler, TX will be held on Sunday, June 23, 2024, at 1 PM CST, at Meadow Lake Senior Living Center, 11245 Shoreline Dr. in Tyler, TX, in the main building auditorium, near the reception desk. Drew Tillman will be officiating. Mrs. Pyatt passed away Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Tyler. She was born June 25, 1930, in Oklahoma City, OK to Fritz and Grace Eickhoff. Shirley was a member of the First United Methodist Church in the different cities in which she lived. Since her husband was in the oil business, she traveled quite frequently when first married; he worked on a crew gathering data across parts of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. When her children were in school, she helped at the school as a volunteer and participated in the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) for several years. She enjoyed playing bingo, and dominoes, having other families over for a visit, Wednesday night dinners at church, taking her kids to sports practice, attending games all over Texas, and camping at area lakes (mostly Oklahoma and Texas). She enjoyed going for walks, riding her bike, playing with her kids in the backyard (on swings, see-saws, and slides), genealogy, planting gardens and flowers in her yard, canoeing, water-skiing, sailing, snow-skiing, cross-country snow-skiing and watching her beloved hummingbirds. She and her family traveled frequently in their RV camper, enjoying life seeing many historic sites and national parks, including Texas parks, Oklahoma parks, the Colorado Rockies, Glacier National Park, and national parks in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. She also lived in Oklahoma City, OK, Ft. Worth, TX, Farmers Branch, TX, Plano, TX and Anchorage, AK - as her husband was assigned there in the latter part of his career. She spent the last 11 years of her life in east Texas to be near her family; living at Hideaway Lake, TX before moving to Tyler, TX to live at Meadow Lake. While she was born in Oklahoma, she spent more years living in Texas than any other state, so we declared her a Texan many times, this always got her attention, but she liked it. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1951 with a degree in Nursing. Throughout her career as a nurse, she worked in many different hospitals, caring for newborns as a specialty. She worked at hospitals in Oklahoma City, OK, Ft. Worth, TX, Sulphur Springs, TX, Tyler, TX, Wichita Falls, TX, Dallas, TX, Plano, TX and Anchorage, AK (where she worked as a volunteer nurse in their Native Medical Center). Shirley was preceded in death by her husband, Virgil Pyatt, in 2018, to whom she was married for 67 years; her mother and father, Fritz and Grace Eickhoff; her mother-in-law, Dorothy Stanford; and many aunts, uncles, and cousins who she loved, and who lived in California, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. She always tried to keep in touch with friends, cousins, and family members. In 2014, she renewed contact with her German family relatives that were severed during World War II; she would speak with her second cousins 3-4 times a year to see how they were doing and just to share family updates. She enjoyed making this connection after so many years but unfortunately did not get a chance to visit them in person before passing. She is survived by her loving family including son Mark Pyatt and his wife, Kim (Plano, TX), and their children Sarah Pyatt (Austin, TX), and Blake and Kait Pyatt, and her great-grandson Beau (Ft. Worth, TX); her daughter Margaret Brotherton and her husband, Mike, (Flint, TX), and their children Thomas Barr, his wife Amanda (Austin, TX); Jennifer Joyce (Flint, TX); and Steven Brotherton (Austin, TX), and her great grand-daughter Aurora Brotherton (Indiana). Thomas Brotherton and wife Lillie, who are Aurora’s parents, died in 2019. As mentioned previously, a service honoring Shirley is scheduled for June 23, 2024, at Meadow Lake Senior Living Center, in Tyler, TX. If desired, donations may be made to The Hospice of East Texas, which is based in Tyler, TX, and provided care services for Shirley and her husband Virgil. The link to their donation site follows: https://hospiceofeasttexas.org/giving/memory/

Shirley Mae Pyatt

June 25, 1930 - June 11, 2024