Elizabeth Rose, “Betty,” Quin, 67, passed away peacefully on Sunday, January 28, 2018 at St. Catherine Village in Madison, Mississippi, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
A native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Betty was a graduate of Yazoo City High School. She received her bachelor of science degree in accounting from Mississippi State University, and she worked initially for Carroll L. Quin and Company, CPA, in Yazoo City. She left there to become a tax manager for a regional CPA firm in Kentucky followed by a similar position at a national CPA firm in Greensboro, North Carolina. She returned to Carroll L. Quin and Company as a partner in late 1991 and became the sole owner of the firm in 1999. She later operated the firm as The Quin CPA Firm, P.C. She specialized in Estate, Gift and Trust tax, income tax, and monthly small business management service.
In 2017 she was awarded lifetime Honorary Membership to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as a result of having been a professional member of AICPA for 40 years.
She was a graduate of Leadership Yazoo, Founding Chairman of the Yazoo County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Business Owner of the Year (2001, Yazoo Herald’s Reader’s Choice Awards), served on the leadership committee of the Momentum Project administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, Chairman of the Kings Daughters Hospital Board of Trustees, and Lay Leader and Treasurer at the First United Methodist Church. She was also an appointee to the Yazoo City Public Service Commission.
She served as secretary of the Mississippi Society of Certified Public Accountants, and as MSCPA Chairman of the Personal Financial Planning Committee. She was named one of “The Delta’s Top 75 Women in Business” in Delta Business Journal in 2000. Her advice to other women in that article was “Realize that God is in control and that you can do nothing without Jesus.”
In her life, Betty was funny, engaging, smart, compassionate, and community oriented. She was devoted to her faith, and she worshiped and sang in the choir at First United Methodist.
A talented musician, she took piano lessons from Mrs. Marion Morris, the organist at the First United Methodist Church, and she played French horn in the Yazoo High School Band and the Mississippi State University Marching Band.
An avid singer, she sang in church choirs at First Methodist and as a member of the Sweet Adelines. She enjoyed traveling, and she went abroad to England and Scotland with her sister Carolyn in 1997. She also traveled abroad with precious friends, Sue Tatum and Joan Turner, to Switzerland and Greece, where she formed special memories that lasted her lifetime.
The most fulfilling part of her life was serving others. She took great pride in sharing her faith with others and in using her community involvement to help those less fortunate. She was close to her parents, Carroll and Rose Quin, who preceded her in death, and they credited her choice to live in Yazoo City with allowing them to stay in their home of sixty years for as long as they could. She was always there for them. In her spare time, she enjoyed her high school friends and the people she interacted with in the community.
We will all miss her humor, but we find joy in celebrating her reliable memory and recognition of the people she knew and loved all her life despite having Alzheimer’s disease. When she saw our beloved childhood choir director, Ruth Ann Williams, for the first time after 40 years, she said to her, “You’re Ruth Ann Williams!” And she said to her sister, Carolyn, “Ruth Ann Williams is here, and she looks the same as she always does!”
Betty enjoyed a close relationship with her first cousin, Jane Beale Jordan and her husband Read of Madison, Mississippi. She was delighted when her cousins, Jeff and Dominique Jordan, decided to name their only female child “Caroline Rose” after her mother. She was thrilled when her cousins, Cary, Allen, Jackson, and Riley Campbell visited her many times at The Martha Coker Home in Yazoo City. She was always glad to see cousins from Texas, Lynn, Rick, Katelyn, Ryan, and Nathan Guillo, and Marsha Beale Staley and her husband Ron. Cousins Mary Hagwood Mullins and her husband John from Clarksdale spent last Christmas with her and Carolyn at St. Catherine’s Village as they had shared many Christmas’ together in childhood. Betty shared her last days with Ruth Ann, all of the cousins, the supportive and loving staff at St. Catherine’s and Kindred Hospice, and her sister Carolyn.
She is survived by her sister Carolyn and her loving family and friends.
Services will be at Stricklin-King Funeral Home in Yazoo City on Wednesday, January 31, 2018, at 2:00 p.m. Graveside services will follow immediately at Glenwood Cemetery. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Catherine’s Village, Methodist Senior Services, The Mind Center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, or the charity of your choice.
