Delores Tedford Smith

Delores Tedford Smith, resident of Cleveland, Texas, passed away early Friday morning, September 17, 2021 from complications following back surgery. Delores was 77 years old.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on March 11, 1944, Delores was the second of three children for Alvin and Erma Tedford, who made their living as travelers and peddlers throughout the central United States. They eventually settled in north Texas to raise their family, where Delores grew up surrounded by a large extended family, as close to her cousins as she was to her siblings.

As a young married woman, Delores stayed home to cook, keep house, and raise three children, but when the last one started kindergarten, she decided to become a nurse, and shared the one-hour commute to the Denton School of Vocational Nursing with a like minded friend until they graduated.

Throughout her life, Delores worked in many different settings as a nurse, most recently in home health providing hospice care, where she provided both her skills and her compassion to many patients and families throughout the Greenville, Texas area and surrounding communities. She also fed her appetite for travel as a truck driver, hauling loads from border to border and ocean to ocean.

Gardening, baking, canning, and cooking, Delores rarely sat down at home except to watch the Cowboys or to play dominoes or cards, especially poker, with the family. Charismatic and outgoing, she made friends everywhere she went. She survived challenges in life with confidence, a strong will, and persistence, starting every day with a clean face, a made bed, and a pot of coffee.

Delores was preceded in death by her sister, Deanie, her husband, Glen Goode, her son, Alvin Goode, her father Alvin Tedford, her mother Erma Tedford, and her last husband, Marvin Smith.

She is survived by her brother, Albert Tedford, her daughter, Debra Burton, her son Chris Goode and his wife, Petra; her nieces Doris, Michelle, and Sasonia Burton; her grandchildren, Stephanie, Lana, and Crystal Smith, and Luna Goode; grandniece Whitney Burton; and great granddaughters Julian and Madeline Lynch, Keira and Madisyn Watts, and Lillian Stead.

Visitation will be held at Pace Stancil Funeral Home in Cleveland, Texas on Wednesday, September 22, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., and on Thursday, September 23, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Services will follow the visitation on Thursday morning at 10 a.m.

Additional services will be held in north Texas in two weeks to accommodate family and friends unable to travel to Cleveland, details to be announced.