Jacklyn Claire Shelton Songy

Jacklyn Claire Shelton Songy died on Sunday, June 9, 2024, at the Chateaus at Montclair, after a brief struggle with liver disease.

She was born in McNairy County (Selmer, TN) Hospital on November 21, 1944, to G.A. and Brewer (Vinson) Shelton. Jacklyn lived in Adamsville, TN, with her parents; a pesky little sister, Patti, born in 1951; maternal grandparents, Will and Clara Vinson; and paternal grandparents, Gus and Vorenia Shelton. It was a pretty good place to grow up, and Jacklyn especially enjoyed her art projects, playing clarinet in the high school band - she could do a mean “Humoresque” even in her later years – and being part of a mysterious (to this day) group called the BBs. 

Upon graduation from Adamsville High School in 1962, she enrolled at what was then Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis). As an art major, Jacklyn explored being bohemian in Memphis, along with similarly artistic friends. After her father “suggested” that art was not a very practical major, she switched to  English. She also applied to go to Tanzania with the Peace Corps and was accepted. That same father did not find that very practical either, so Jacklyn remained in Memphis. 

 Soon after graduation, Jacklyn went to work in the reservations offices of Delta Air Lines, first in Memphis, later in Hollywood, China Lake NAS, and Shreveport, where she moved into the marketing arena. In between those Delta moves, occasioned by her brief marriage to U.S. Navy seaman Richard Frego, she actually did teach English, and art. 

 In 1976, she met and married The Rev. Dr. Benedict Gaston Songy, of New Orleans. Ben’s story, from the Order of St. Benedict to Episcopal priest, deserves a book of its own. Fr. Songy served as vicar of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Carthage, Texas, while Jacklyn commuted to Shreveport from the vicarage in Carthage. Both Ben and Jacklyn loved their years in Carthage, where they served God and made many wonderful friends. After more than  20 years with Delta Air Lines, Jacklyn retired. Soon, she and Ben moved back to Shreveport, where Ben unexpectedly became an assistant priest at St. Matthias Episcopal Church and Jacklyn became church secretary, a position that she loved and served in for 17 years. 

Jacklyn and Ben were soulmates and lived happily ever after, except, as life has a way of doing, “ever after” came too quickly. After an auto accident in 2011, Ben had a stroke, which then led to vascular dementia. Jacklyn invited that pesky little sister, to come to Shreveport from Phoenix, Arizona, to help care for Ben, which they did until Ben's death in 2015. The last words on Ben’s lips were, “God is good,” and we all agreed.

 Jacklyn is survived by her sister, Patti Shelton, of Shreveport, and lots of cousins all over the South.

 Hers was a rich and full life, lived in faith. Her church home after St. Matthias has been the place where she and Ben were married, Church of the Holy Cross (Episcopal), where she served on the vestry for a time, and where she enjoyed volunteering with the church secretary as they swapped tales that only church secretaries know about their places of work and worship.

A visitation and reception will be held on Thursday, June 13, 2024 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Kilpatrick’s Rose-Neath Funeral Home, 1815 Marshall St.

 Private inurnment of Jacklyn’s ashes at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, in the columbarium next to her beloved Ben, and a memorial service will take place at a later date.