Bill Chipman died on Sunday, November 2, 2003 at 11:30pm after a long and painful battle with multiple illnesses. He was born on March 23, 1928 and lived all his life in Greenville except for his military service in 1946-47 when he went with Adm. Byrd's final expedition to the South Pole. He was a co-founder of the Mississippi
Numismatic Society, the Mississippi Archeology Society, the Winterville Indian Mound Museum, the Greenville Chess Club, the annual Greenville Arts & Craft Fair and the Nathaniel Greene chapter of the Mississippi Sons of the American Revolution.
After serving Greenville as a police officer he was an agent for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company for over a quarter of a century. He was an avid genealogist and traveled widely across the U.S.A. and the world. He was a charter member of Covenant Presbyterian Church.
He is survived by his mother Arrhetta Ray Chipman, his wife of 55 years, Mary Gibbs Chipman, two children, Will Chipman (Cindy) and Sarah Ellen Parish (Keith), and five grand children, Elisabeth Chipman Kibler (Daniel) of Jacksonville, FL, and Sarah Emily, Hannah Gayle, Isaac and Judah Parish of Ethel, MS, as well as his dear cousin, Linda M. Nabors of Greenville and a host of other friends. Funeral arrangements by Mortimer’s Funeral Home with visitation there Tuesday from 6-8 pm and services at Covenent Presbytarian on Wednesday at 10:00am. He will always be missed and will always be remembered.(versions of this appeared in the Delta Democrat Times, the Commercial Appeal, the Clarion-Ledger and the Star-Herald.)
Dear friend ~
Thank you so much for your kind and sympathetic
words. Dad went through almost three years of ever-increasing pain from a mind-bogging
array of illnessess, starting with shattering a vertabra on Christmas Eve, 2000. The
underlying cause was ostoprosis; this should teach you (and me) to take our calcium every
day. He didn't. Sigh.
Due to the chronic high-level pain, he slowly stopped eating, eventually starving himself to death. It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, especially in the last two months. I was with him day after day, him fading away, in intense pain, refusing to eat. It was passive suicide. The bleak helplessness was (and is) very depressing, truely traumatic to me and my family. It was enough for a committed Christian to question, if only for a while, if God is actually merciful.
Now it's all over and he is at rest, praise God. We the living must carry on. The paperwork and decisions related to death are numerous and mind-boggling. Others will handle most of those those details. I was just his chauffour and go-fer, in the end his urinal bearer. Sigh.
May you and all those you love be granted an ideal death: quick, painless and (perferably) later. I'm sorry thats so morbid, but it's true. Now I'll try to end my pity party. ~ WILL
