William M. Godwin, 74, passed away Jan. 9, 2015, at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. Arrangements are incomplete and will be announced later by Grayson Funeral Home, Corinth.
Published in Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on Jan. 12, 2015
From John Goodman, ’62 Class Secretary; 3/20/2018
We recently have learned of the death of classmate Bill (William Morrison) Godwin of Corinth, Mississippi in early 2015. A number of years had passed without hearing from or about Bill, but within the past several weeks our ’62 class secretary emeritus, Bob Auman, was doing some research on Davidson folks and came across the notice listed above:
After Bob shared this information with me, I was able to have telephone conversations with Ms. Jordan who is on the funeral home’s staff as well as with Mr. Grayson, operator of the funeral home. These individuals remembered Bill as an active newspaperman, who in his later years had talked with Mr. Grayson about his wishes for final arrangements. The funeral home has relocated since the time of Bill’s death and in the move some records including those pertaining to Bill were misplaced and no longer are readily available. But Mr. Grayson was able to give me name and telephone number for Alex Mascagni, a young woman who was a relative of Bill’s, and late in his life she extended care to Bill and worked with the funeral home in carrying out Bill’s requests concerning final disposition.
I was able to reach Alex by telephone and had a very cordial conversation with her. Although Bill was a good deal older than Alex and she thus didn’t have opportunity to know him well, she used the term “brilliant” in describing what she learned and knew of Bill. She indicated to me that in his later life he did have medical issues which afflicted him; she spoke of having visited him in the hospital. She followed up our conversation with some researching of her files and shortly afterward emailed me as follows:
The information I found from my documents supports Bill passed away January 9, 2015 at North Mississippi Medical Center. We did not have an official ceremony, but Grayson Funeral Home and I cremated his remains on January 12, 2015 and I spread his ashes over his parents’ grave in Corinth, MS in accordance with Bill’s end of life wishes. I’m not certain if there was an official obituary. I found the same information you did online which leads me to believe there wasn’t an official one published in the local paper.
While it saddens me that Davidson and Bill didn’t continue to have contact over the years, I’m grateful that even at this stage we’ve been able to learn this much about him from folks who knew and remember him with appreciation from his post-student years.