Obit – Mrs. Virginia Doran McCall

Mrs. Virginia Doran McCall, age 86 of Carthage, died peacefully surrounded by her caregivers at 9:45 p.m. Saturday evening, December 10, 2022, at the home of her and her husband on Jackson Avenue. She was pronounced deceased at 11:45 p.m. by HighPoint Hospice of Gallatin, who had been assisting the family with her care.

Mrs. McCall’s pastor, Bro. Tim Frank, will officiate at the 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, December 14th, funeral services from the Carthage First Baptist Church. Burial will follow in the Garden of Gethsemane at the Smith County Memorial Gardens. 

The McCall family will receive friends at Sanderson in Carthage on Tuesday from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. and on Wednesday at First Baptist from noon until the 1 p.m. funeral service.

The youngest of six children, three daughters and three sons, she was born Virginia Olive Doran in Beaver in Boone County, Iowa on April 25, 1936 and was the daughter of the late Benjamin Butler Doran, who died in November of 1950 at the age of 66, and Elizabeth Harker Doran, who died in November of 1984 at the age of 86.

All of her siblings preceded her in death, two sisters, Beverly Marie Doran Healey died June 10, 2014 at the age of 86, and Marilyn Elizabeth Doran died July 3, 2017 at the age of 86; three brothers, Justin Charles (J. C.) Doran, who died February 19, 2011 at the age of 86, Thomas Harker Doran, who died October 30, 2009 at the age of 84, James Robert “Jim” Doran, who died June 30, 1994 at the age of 66.

The brother Jim, was a professional football player and played for the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, and Pittsburgh Steelers.

Mrs. McCall was a 1953 graduate of Boone High School and she graduated from Tennessee Polytechnic Institute (now Tennessee Technological University) in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics and where she had the highest grades in the Home Economics and Agriculture Department  her senior year.

In 1958, she was selected for the 1957-58 school year to be listed as Who’s Who among students in American Universities and Colleges from Tennessee Polytechnic Institute.

And now for the story how she met and was married in Boone, Iowa on June 26, 1955 to the man that would become the love of her life, Watervale community native, and later Carthage businessman and philanthropist Albert Burr “A. B.” McCall: Albert tells the story of how one day while driving down the street in Boone and stopped at a traffic light and saw Virginia Doran stopped at a light in her car beside him. He asked his friend Stan Moffett, who she was. They then drove to her house where Stan introduced them. Virginia was 18 and home on a break from college. At the time she was attending Woods College in Fulton, Missouri on an academic scholarship and A. B. was teaching agriculture to World War II veterans at Boone High School.

They were married nine months later and spent their honeymoon that summer in Europe where they visited seventeen countries.

They then returned to Carthage and A. B. bought into his father, D.T. McCall’s, furniture and appliance business.

Mrs. McCall was a member of the Carthage First Baptist Church.

Surviving, in addition to her husband of over sixty seven years, are their two children, Menda McCall Holmes and husband, Howard, of Lebanon, A.J. McCall, also of Lebanon; four grandchildren, Derek McCall Decker of Nashville, Monica Virginia Decker of Old Hickory, Houston Alexander McCall of Carthage, Katherine Elizabeth McCall of Lebanon; great-granddaughter, Ava Rae McCall.

The McCall family requests memorials be made to the Carthage First Baptist Church.

SANDERSON of CARTHAGE