Catherine Henson

Graveside services for Catherine Mooney Henson, 95, Maricopa, Arizona, will be held at 2:00 p.m., Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at Oak Lawn Cemetery, West Plains, Missouri, under the direction of Robertson-Drago Funeral Home.

Mrs. Henson passed away May 24, 2020, in Maricopa, Arizona.

She was born November 28, 1924, at Ravenden Springs, Arkansas, to James Franklin Marion Jackson Mooney and Josephine Ray Mooney.  Catherine lived in Ravenden Springs, Arkansas until the age of 5.  In the Crash of 1929, her family moved to Dell, Arkansas, where they began farming her father’s property there.  There were 13 children in Catherine’s family; she was one of 10 girls and 3 boys.  She had many wild and fun adventures growing up on the farm in the country with all of her siblings.  Catherine thoroughly enjoyed and honored each of her siblings.  She was 17 when WWII began for our country.  Catherine met her husband, Tom (also known as Red), in Blytheville in 1946.  Most of her sisters already knew him and some had dated him previously.  You would have thought that her height of almost 6 feet would have discouraged him, but he said she wasn’t tall, he was just a little short!  He liked the way she looked, so he pursued her and they fell in love.  It didn’t take too long until they were engaged.  They were married April 20, 1947 and to their union they had 2 daughters, Ann and Faye, as they were called.  They spent several years in Blytheville and Memphis, then looking for more opportunities, in 1953 they moved to southern California.  Catherine tried a number of different jobs until she went to work for the Post Office in Torrance, California, where she worked for eighteen years.  Catherine and Tom lived in California for 35 years; she really enjoyed her life and raising her daughters there.  Catherine’s hobbies were shopping, church and when the grandchildren came along, she was so excited; she loved buying things for them.  Catherine and Tom retired and moved to West Plains, Missouri, where once again Catherine tried a few different things, until she opened Sunshine Day Care in the 1980’s.  She liked running her own business and was successful with it.  She cared for many area children for quite a few years.  After Tom died in 1995, Catherine stayed a few more years in West Plains, but missed having any family around, so she moved close to her sister, Betty and her family in Conway, Arkansas.  Catherine didn’t have a sit still nature; she had to be busy all of the time, so she went to work in Senior Care. She was strong and healthy, so she ended up caring for many seniors younger than she was.  She was full of life and enjoyed caring for them and they loved having her with them.  The company she worked for loved her also and was very proud of the work she did.  Consequently, she won the Care Giver of the Year Award.  Catherine always seemed much younger than she was, she never wanted to tell her real age.  As she grew older, Catherine learned to use Facebook as a way to communicate with her family and share pictures.  She also started telling some of the stories of things that happened with her brothers and sisters growing up.  Everyone loved the stores, so she told more and more.  Catherine enjoyed this so much and always having had a flair for writing, decided to write a book about her family and include most of her stories, information of her father, who was born during the Civil War and the genealogy of her family.  Thinking about Catherine and some of her accomplishments:  A huge accomplishment would be her love of family.  If she were to have a nickname, it would be “Catherine, Come to the Rescue, Henson”.  There are so many people that know exactly what that means.  She became the author of three books, but her health failed before finishing the fourth.  At the end, she was ready to go home.  We will all miss her and her capacity to love everyone she came in contact with. 

She is survived by two children, Kathryn Ann Pike, Maricopa, Arizona and Carolyn Faye Campbell, Conway, Arkansas; one sister, Betty Jo Taylor, Conway, Arkansas; grandchildren, Cindy and Scott Pike, Maricopa, Arizona, Adaline Fraser, State of Oregon, Carrie Eakin, State of California, Jennifer Tapper, State of California, Matthieu Campbell, Bentonville, Arkansas, Dan Campbell, Conway, Arkansas, Nicholas Campbell, Sisters, Oregon, Lilly Sherwood, Germany, Carolina Campbell, Conway, Arkansas, Will Campbell, Conway, Arkansas and Sarah Campbell, Rexburg, Idaho; and a host of nieces and nephews that she treated as her own and they thought of her like a second Mom.

Her parents, husband, grandson, Joshua Wade Campbell, her sisters, Stella Cook, Magdalene Mirandy (Johnnie) Byrd, Anna Grice, Willie Wells, Pauline Henderson, Virginia Martin, Mary Lee Jarrett, Vida Ray Holsclaw and her brothers, Franklin Mooney, Lloyd Mooney, Floyd Jackson “Bud” Mooney, preceded her in death.