Mrs. Marshall Keeble Passes

Laura C. Keeble
Age 108 - March 5, 2007

Features - "Sister Keeble," widow of famous traveling evangelist, dies at age 108

By Tamie Ross
The Christian Chronicle

Laura Keeble, the widow of the late traveling evangelist Marshall Keeble, has died at a Nashville, Tenn., nursing home. She was 108.

Baptized in a Mississippi creek 94 years ago, the gentle woman best known as "Sister Keeble" boasted a spiritual strength that belied her wrinkles, white hair and wheelchair.

Even in her later years, she expected someone to wheel her downstairs each Sunday afternoon for worship service.

"I'm going as long as I'm able to get up," she said at age 104 in a 2003 interview with Christian Chronicle managing editor Bobby Ross Jr., then a religion writer for The Associated Press.

For much of her life, Keeble lived in the shadows of her husband, who started more than 250 Churches of Christ, mainly black congregations in the South, and quietly helped bring about integration.

But this humble woman who became "Mama" to dozens of young girls had a story of her own - one of race, faith and perseverance.

Note: Memorial tribute, from the Jackson Street church website - www.jacksonst.org