Cothran, Fanny Mae (Tidwell)

Fanny Mae Tidwell Cothran

Date of birth: 15 Jan 1923
Date of death: 20 Jan 2000

Burial Information

Section 01 (Click Here for Section Map)
Cemetery: Odd Fellows Cemetery
Plot: 0638-06
Status: Occupied

Notes

Obituary
Local Radio Owner, Lexington Native Died January 20

On Thursday, January 20, 2000, one of Mississippi’s prominent citizens and business people passed away. Fanny Mae Cothran of Lexington succumbed to a lengthy respiratory illness. She was born in 1923 and had just celebrated her 77th birthday the previous Saturday, January' 15th.

From humble beginnings, one of nine children born to E. E. and Dessie Robertson Tidwell and raised with a strong faith in God, she achieved what other women had not done before.

She was the first woman ever elected as president of the Mississippi Broadcasters Association in 1973 after serving on the board of Directors, Secretary and Vice President of the organization.

In 1999, she was unanimously awarded a lifetime membership in the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters.

She was the first woman ever elected to the Board of Alderman of her hometown of Lexington and went on to be elected as the first woman mayor of Lexington where she served two terms.

She had gotten into the broadcasting industry in 1959 when she took a job as secretary of the newly opened radio station, WXTN, and was named manager of the station one year later. She bought the radio station later and opened another after that.

Her education consisted of a high school degree from Lexington High School and a First Class FCC license from the Elkins Institute of Radio & Electronics in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humanity Degree in 1975 by Saints College.

Her awards included: Community Leader of America in 1969; Business and Professional Woman of the Year in 1970; Governor’s “Outstanding Mississippian” in 1973; Fanny Mae Cothran Day, proclaimed by the Governor, Bill Waller, in Mississippi, June 20, 1973; listed in 1975 Edition of Outstanding Americans of the South; named to Who’s Who in Mississippi, Who's’ Who of the South, and 1977 World Who’s Who. She has had a daily fifteen minute radio program on WXTN for the past 40 years sharing the scripture, and reading and interpreting Bible passages in down-to-earth terms.

Affectionately known to her radio audience as “Aunt Fanny”, she was well known and respected throughout central Mississippi.

She served as secretary, treasurer, and teacher at the First Baptist Church in Lexington and had been a frequent speaker in churches of all denominations, to civic clubs and college and youth groups. Fanny Mae is survived by her husband. Thomas A. Cothran of Lexington; two brothers, James P. Tidweil of Lexington and Kelly B. Tidwell of Hernando; one sister, Doris Smith of Thomasville, GA; sons, Thomas A. Cothran, Jr. of Tucson, AZ, and Brad Maurice Cothran of Lexington; daughter, Babs Edwards of Coxburg; son; 12 grandchildren; and 9 great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by one son, Michael Cothran, and one daughter, Annette Henley, both of Lexington.

Funeral services were held at the First Baptist Church in Lexington on Saturday, January 22 at 2:00, with burial following in Odd Fellows Cemetery in Lexington. Officiating were Reverends Doug Applegate, Lee Jessie Johnson, Bobby Williamson and Lorance Frost and Dr. Michael O’Brien.

Pallbearers were Fulton Young Jr., Wes Sterling, Robert Autry, Jr., Tac Tate, J. M. Tidwell and Robert Dickard. Honorary pallbearers were all past and present deacons of Lexington First Baptist Church, Shade Bethany, Ed Barrentine, Robin Mathis and Dr. John Downer.

Memorials may be sent to First Baptist Church of Lexington, P.O. Box Lexington, MS 39095.

Burial: 22 Jan 2000

The mayor of Lexington

Anne Washburn McWilliams

“What I try to do is to make people feel better.” Besides Bible studies and devotional thoughts on her radio program, Fanny Mae Cothran includes prayers for the governor and other elected officials. She’s been doing the 9:30 a.m. “Coke Break” on WXTN, Lexington, for 28 years. “I encourage people to be cheerful,” she says, “and to realize we can always find something good about life every day.”

The celebrated radio personality and owner of WXTN was elected mayor of Lexington in 1985, the first woman to win that job. Before that, she was the first woman on her city’s Board of Aldermen, and she’s a former Holmes County member of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board.

Some of the men in Lexington who didn’t want her to run for mayor, she remembers, said women should be subject to their husbands. When she talked this over with her pastor, Michael O’Brien of First Baptist, Lexington, she told him, “I am subject to my husband, but the Bible doesn’t say, ‘Be subject to all the men in Lexington.’” Being a woman has never bothered or stopped her. “There’s no limit on God,” she maintains, assurance in her blue eyes."

Standing erect in her beige knit dress and a jaunty blue and orange scarf, she unlocks the door of her office at City Hall. “I have no set hours as mayor, but I go when and where I’m needed for appointments or projects.”

She continues, “My goal is to make Lexington a safe place for people to enjoy living the abundant life.” Under her leadership, a nursing home has been built in the city, the business community has expanded, and city indebtedness has been paid off. A highway bypass is under construction. “When we try to do our work ourselves, we get frustrated. It doesn’t matter what you do, if you abandon self and let the Lord do the work, he will make it easy. He goes before and after.”

Born Fanny Tidwell in Lexington, she was one of a family of four boys and five girls. At 15 she was converted while Jud Chastain was preaching a revival in her town. When the two preachers were coming to visit at her house, she told her sister to tell them she was not there.

“Tell them yourself,” her sister said, not willing to lie.

When the evangelist found her under a tree in the yard, he asked if she wanted to trust Jesus and be saved. Immediately she burst into tears and said yes. (Until this day, the thing she hates most is to hear someone tell a lie.)

After she had married Thomas A. Cothran, an independent grocer, and they had three children and faced a time of financial problems, she remembers, “I made a real commitment to the Lord.” She found a job as church secretary at First, Lexington, (this she kept for ten years, when Paul Bragg was pastor) and told her family, “From now on, you are second. The Lord is first. Looking back she says, “And he has blessed me more than I could have ever imagined.”

Her husband of 45 years is now retired. Their five children are Thomas, lieutenant colonel in the Air Force; Annette (Henley); Babs (Edwards); Michael (deceased); and Brad Maurice. There are 11 grandchildren. Michael died in an automobile accident in 1973 while he was minister of music at Hanging Moss Baptist Church in Jackson.

“The Lord knows what he is doing, and we trust him,” Fanny says. “I don’t think of Michael as dead. He is more alive than he has ever been. I don’t get to see him or touch him for awhile, but I know he is in God’s presence. When another of my sons was in Spain, I could not see him, but I knew he was there and that I would see him again.” At first, though, after Michael died, she was so torn that she thought, “I can’t live like this,” and she remembers that she stopped the car one day and prayed, “Lord, you just take charge.” And she adds, “He did. And since that time, I have known the greatest joy in serving him.”

Around 1960, she began work at the radio station as secretary for $40 a week; in less than two years she became manager. A few years ago she bought the station.

Through her radio work she has striven for racial harmony. “The station gave me a door to the black community,” she says. Saint’s College, Arenia C. Mallory, president, awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. Since she began work at the station, five young men, some black, some white, have left employment there to enter the gospel ministry. Though she admits to racial disharmony in Lexington at one time, especially in the 60s, she thinks it was somewhat overplayed. “Now we have mutual respect for one another.

She was the first woman to be president of the Mississippi Broadcasters’ Association. In 1973 she was named as the governor’s “Outstanding Mississippian;” Fanny Cothran Day was proclaimed in the state June 20, 1973.

Mixing religion and politics, she says, is no trouble to her. “Christians are Christians, wherever they are.”

She enters a house with a wide porch and white columns. Inside, there’s a restaurant. She stops to chat with other patrons and waves to still others across the room. Seated at a table with a pink cloth, and finishing a piece of apple pie, she says, “If I retired, I might find myself becoming a hermit. I am happiest when I am with my husband, and I might spend my days refinishing furniture.” Her two-story white house is one of many handsome old houses in Lexington, and she has a good collection of antiques. Crocheting she likes well enough that she thus made all her Christmas ornaments.

But for the present she is involved in community service. She teaches a young women’s Sunday School class, the Seekers. Particularly she likes to teach I John and is memorizing the whole book. “If my Bible were taken from me and I had only I John, I believe I could use it to win people to Christ.”

The goal of my life,” says Fanny, “is to be one in Christ Jesus. That’s the only way he can demonstrate his life to the world. If we are not one in him, we are inaccurate demonstrations of him. Some people say that sounds like a pretty impossible goal. But it can be reached. If he lives in me, then I will be a vehicle. That should be the reality of our lives.”