Mabel Matlock, 87

Maude "Mabel" Matlock, 87, died Tuesday, June 03, 2003, at a nursing home in Phoenix, Ariz.

Graveside service were held Monday, June 9, at Mountain View Cemetery in Mountain Home. Arrangements were under the direction of Summers Funeral Home, McMurtrey Chapel, in Mountain Home.

Mabel was born Sept. 8, 1915, in Woodbine, Kent., to Mary Margaret and A. B. Powers, the second of five children.

She married Marquis E. "Matt" Matlock on Sept. 19, 1941, in the Panama Canal Zone. As her husband was in the Navy and then in the Air Force, they moved frequently and lived in many parts of the country from Florida to California, making friends wherever they went. They had two daughters, Barbara and Carroll.

In 1958, Matt retired from the Air Force and they moved their family to Mountain Home where they lived for the next 30 years.

After her husband died in 1994, Mabel continued to live for a number of years in Nampa until a fall resulted in a need for nursing home care. Then, she moved to Council to be near her daughter, Barbara. When that nursing home was forced to close, she went to one in Phoenix near her other daughter, Carroll, where she has spent her last days surrounded with her loved ones.

Throughout her life, she was an active member of her church, wherever she lived, most often helping in the nursery as she always had a love of babies and young children, her family noted.

She is preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, Marquis E. Matlock, her parents, and three younger brothers.

She is survived by: her older sister, Audra Jache of Costa Mesa, Calif.; her daughters and their husbands, Barbara and Neil Swenson of Council, and Carroll and Dale Rees of Phoenix, Ariz.; six grandchildren and 16 great-grand- children.