Alice Jane (Dessent) McEwuen, 87, died Friday, October 12, 2018, on what would have been her late husband’s 94th birthday, at Sundale Nursing Home in Morgantown. Alice was born May 5, 1931, in Weston.
She was preceded in death by her husband, James Edward McEwuen; as well as her father, George Titus Dessent; her mother, Mary Minerva (Shaw) Dessent; and step-mother, Betty (Riggs) Dessent; and a sister, Ann (Dessent) Williams.
Alice was a loving wife and mother, a very talented artist, cook, and seamstress, who worked for 20 years at the Monongalia County Board of Education, where, among many other things, she served as an assistant to the director of the Head Start and Follow Through programs, serving small children in the school system. She also volunteered at Brookhaven Elementary school in the kitchen and other capacities, and in later life, by reading books to students there under the pseudonym ‘Auntie Alice.’
She was a skilled cook and baker, who was well known in Brookhaven for her gingerbread boy cookies, which she gave out every year by the hundreds to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. She loved art, color, and flowers, always decorating her house for various holidays. She also enjoyed interesting rocks and minerals, with which she decorated her numerous flower pots and planters. She had a fascination with nature and made a habit of collecting Monarch butterfly caterpillars, which she would then keep in her home until they had completed their metamorphosis into adult butterflies.
She served her community in various organizations, including as a cook for the Brookhaven Lions Club, while her husband Jim was president, and also during the annual Decker’s Creek Valley Days festival held during the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to cooking and serving as hostess for the festival dinners, she also designed the printed programs, for which she created original artworks.
She enjoyed traveling, and made several auto trips to Montana to visit her daughter and family, as well as two trips to Scotland with her husband Jim.
Alice was deeply loved by her children and grandchildren, as well as all her extended family members, co-workers, and the community at large.
She is survived by four children, Richard George (and Sherry) McEwuen, of Morgantown, Charles Allen (and Sylvia) McEwuen, of Morgantown, Mary Faye (McEwuen) (and Greer) Williams, West Yellowstone, Mont. and John Russell (and Mary) McEwen, Oakland, Md.; seven grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; two brothers, Robert Dessent, of Tallmadge, Ohio and Thomas (and Marian) Dessent, of Durham, N.C.
The family would like to extend a heartfelt thank you for the excellent care of Alice by the doctors, nurses and staff of the Sundale Nursing Home in Morgantown. You have shown a superior level of loving care for our mom over the years, and surely eased her pain, and our minds.
Friends will be received at Hastings Funeral Home from 4 p.m. on Tuesday, October 16, until the time of the memorial service at 6 p.m.
