A Death Too Newsworthy For It Not To Be Reported
ATLANTA — In these times, when the publication of obituaries is no longer contingent on the factors of general interest and newsworthiness, it sometimes is easy for a death to go unreported in an area where it in fact is of general interest and newsworthy.
Take the case of Evelyn Meadows Acton, who died in Shreveport, La., on September 12. Mrs. Acton was a native of Vidalia and the second youngest and last survivor of the seven children of one of the city’s founding and most prominent families.
It had been many years since Mrs. Acton lived in Vidalia, and her funeral and burial were in Shreveport, where she and her late husband, J. Keith Acton, lived most of their married lives. (They had no children.)
But Mrs. Acton was the daughter of a couple for whom two of Vidalia’s best-known institutions were named. Meadows Memorial Medical Center was named for her father, Dr. John M. Meadows, who for many years in the town’s early history was its only physician. And Sally D. Meadows School was named for her mother.
Moreover, Vidalia’s earliest and still largest residential subdivision, Meadows Estates, was developed by Mrs. Acton’s brother,
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