Kathleen Phipps Pinson, 86: Her world was politics and current events
Name any newsmagazine.
Kathleen Pinson of Atlanta probably subscribed to it.
"Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report -- she read all of those from cover to cover," said her son, Michael Woods of Atlanta. "She read a lot of books on politics, too."
With this Democrat, though, there was room for open-mindedness. While she would read books by pundits like the late Molly Ivins, she also could appreciate the prose of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.
She supported President Barack Obama, but didn't back universal health coverage. Still, she would defend the president on other matters, just as she did former President Bill Clinton, her son said.
She penned commentary that appeared as letters to the editor in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Shortly after the 2000 Republican National Convention, she wrote:
"The Republican Convention was one big love fest. George ‘Dubya' was adored and worshiped by his loyal fans, who did everything short of bringing out the royal diadem and crowning him king of kings. ... Let us hope that they know utopia cannot be achieved, and that ‘Dubya' knows that adoration is usually short-lived."
On Nov. 16, Kathleen Phipps Pinson, 86, of Atlanta died of natural causes at VistaCare Hospice. A memorial service will be held at a later date. Southcare Cremation Society and Memorial Centers in Stockbridge handled arrangements.
Mrs. Pinson was raised in Hawkins County, a farming community in East Tennessee, where relatives had been pioneer settlers. After graduation from Church Hill High, she took a course at the University of Tennessee to get a job at Holston Ordnance Works, a World War II manufacturing plant in Kingsport.
That's where she met her first husband, the late Hubert Woods. He left her to raise three children alone.
In 1963, Mrs. Pinson moved to Atlanta and was hired in the credit department at the Regional Bank of Georgia. She retired from First American Bank of Georgia in the mid-1980s.
Her second husband, John E. Pinson, died in 1994.
Her son suspects that her avid appetite for news came from a rural upbringing.
"She grew up in the remote hills of Tennessee, and the radio was their communication to the outside world," he said. "Her father had been a staunch Democrat and Roosevelt supporter. She loved to discuss politics and current events. That was her world."
Additional survivors include two daughters, Gwendolyn George and Elizabeth Smalling of Maryville, Tenn.; stepsons George F. Pinson and John S. Pinson of Atlanta; brothers Harry Phipps and Edsel Phipps of Hawkins County, Tenn.; a sister, Beatrice Marshall of Church Hill, Tenn.; five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
