Ethel Laird, 75, passed on January 23, 2022, in Houston, Texas. Ethel was born in Houston, Texas, on January 18, 1947, to parents Richard Taylor and Dorothy Taylor, and was raised in Tarkington, Texas. Ethel’s church affiliations include Rural Shade Baptist Church, Cleveland, Texas, and Oak Grove Baptist Church, Grapeland, TX.
Ethel Laird was known to her family and friends as “Ethel Pearl”. She was named after her two grandmothers: one, a fierce auburn-haired lady of tall stature, and the other, tiny but mighty; both full of life and love. She was known for traveling “the road not taken” and forged her own path and had her own way of doing things and looking at life. Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”, suggests that our power to shape events comes not from choices made in the material world but from the mind’s ability to mold the past into a particular story. Many times she wondered aloud about the paths that she had taken and what might have happened had she taken a different path. She would sigh, but in the end, we feel that she was happy in the paths she chose - a little bit of one grandmother and a little of the other. She was an accomplished cosmetologist, florist, cake designer, and came to love all the children who she fed daily in the school systems. When listening to stories from some of her oldest friends and family, they always comment that she loved to joke, laugh, and have fun. She had one biological daughter but also deeply loved her son and daughter from two of her marriages.
Then came the grandchildren and she grasped onto the meaning of true love and measures of love. She wanted to see them more but was unable to in her last years. She kept their memories in her heart. Ethel had deepened her relationship with God over the last several years, read her Bible daily, and knew that Jesus would meet her - that was the road she ultimately traveled.
Ethel is preceded in death by both parents Richard Granville Taylor and Dorothy Grace Wilson; brothers, Charles “Sonny” Taylor and Richard LeRoy Taylor.
Ethel is survived by son, Patrick Laird, Jr., and wife Christine Laird, Spring TX; daughters, Brenda Arteaga Barron and husband Abel Barron, Jr., Houston, TX; Tina French Pena and husband Rio Rancho, NM; sister, Helen Barnett and husband, Ralph Barnett, Elkhart, TX; sister-in-law, Scarlette Taylor, Caldwell, TX; ten grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Visitation: Wednesday, January 26, 2022
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Walker & Walker
Service: Thursday, January 27, 2022
10:00 AM
Oak Grove
1442 FM 2968, Grapeland, TX 75844
Interment:
Pilgrim Cemetery
Elkhart, TX