Obit – Mrs. Ruth Hackett Piper
Mrs. Ruth Hackett Piper, age 92, of Sevierville and a longtime Hermitage resident, died at 3:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday afternoon, June 7, 2022, at the Brookdale Senior Living Solutions on Middle Creek Road in Sevierville where she had resided since February 10, 2018.
Mrs. Piper was at the Carthage Chapel of Sanderson Funeral Home. Bro. Tim Frank officiated at the 1:00 pm. Saturday afternoon, June 11th, gravesides services. Burial followed between her husband and son in the Garden of The Cross at the Smith County Memorial Gardens.
Mrs. Piper was born Mildred Ruth Hackett in South Carthage on February 13, 1930 and was one of three daughters and a son born to the late Jess Haynie Hackett Sr., who died August 12, 1967 at the age of 91, and Minerva Vera Cowan Hackett, who died August 1, 1973 at the age of 77.
A brother, Jess Haynie Hackett Jr., preceded her in death on March 4, 2004 at the age of 78.
Mrs. Piper was a 1948 graduate of the then Carthage High School where she was a star basketball player for the “Owls”, playing all four years and serving as Captain her senior year and a member of the “C” club her freshman and sophomore years. She majored in Home Economics and was a member of the Spanish, Latin, Home Economics, Commercial, and Science Clubs.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in Cookeville, (now Tennessee Technological University) in 1952.
At the Carthage First Baptist Church she was united in marriage on June 27, 1953 to her high school classmate, Riddleton community native Clint Beasley Piper, who preceded her in death at the age of 84 on January 31, 2015.
They were preceded in death by their only child, a son, U. S. Army Captain William Stone “Will” Piper” Sr., who died May 17, 1991 at the age of 36.
Mrs. Piper retired in May of 1982 from the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County School System where she taught for thirty years.
She was a member of the Tulip Grove Baptist Church on Shute Lane in Old Hickory and also a member of the Old Hickory Country Club.
Surviving are three grandchildren, Will Piper Jr. and wife, Andrea, of Old Hickory, Jim Piper and wife, Amanda, of Knoxville, Susanne Piper Bower and husband, Chris, of Seymour; three great-grandchildren, Caleb Piper, Carly Piper and Piper Bower; two sisters, Frances Hackett Dudney Crowder of Hermitage, Joanne Hackett Smith of St. Petersburg, Florida.
SANDERSON of CARTHAGE
