As you may have noticed, the good folks I have written about so far have been members of the Clarke-Venable Memorial Baptist church in Decatur. Today we turn our attention to a well-respected member of the Decatur United Methodist church, which also had its beginnings in the 1800s.
Mrs. Iris Lapearl Pellegrene Boggan was born in Jackson in 1930 and grew up in Pearl for about the first seven years of her life. Her mother, Ada Belle Pellegrene, was from Terry, Mississippi, and her father was from Pearl. Iris had a little sister a couple years younger. As happens so often in families, marital troubles changed their lives.
When Iris was about eight, her parents divorced and her mother, a nurse, found work at a sanatorium in Jackson. Mrs. Pellegrene sought help from her large family. Several agreed to help but wanted to make the girls part of their own family. To ensure the girls’ wellbeing without giving them away, she put the girls in a Methodist orphanage in Jackson for about seven years. She sent money monthly to the Home and was able to visit the children regularly. Iris’s mother went on to join the Army, serving in both WWII and the Korean War before retiring in 1966 as a Major.When I asked about life in the Home, Ms. Iris replied, “They taught us to work,” and she expressed gratitude for that. She said that the boys were sent out to work in the fields and with the animals. They would bring in milk to the Home. She and others would use an agitating washing machine as a churn to make several pounds of butter at a time! The children attended church services in the Home itself, and she received her schooling there. She also learned to play the piano while at the Home.Ms. Iris was in nursing school when she met Austin Pleasant Boggan, from Jasper County’s Fellowship Community. He was in medical school at Tulane, but he worked for a neurosurgeon in Jackson right across the street from where she was in nursing school. They met and eventually decided to marry, but he would not agree to marry until he finished school. She became a full-fledged nurse in 1952, working in Jackson at MS Baptist Hospital for a year, before he finished in 1953, at which time they married.
After a year in New Orleans, they chose Decatur as a place to live and practice medicine.
One interesting anecdote concerned the first patient the young doctor had in Decatur. They were moving in their house on Fifth Street, when they heard a knock at the door. Two young boys were there, one bleeding profusely from the mouth. Bud Smith and his cousin Bob, “Butch” Smith had ridden their bikes to the playground, located about where the new ECCC women’s dorm was built. In their playing around on the large metal swings, Bob hurt his mouth. Dr. Boggan took them on down to his office where the drug store is now, to stitch him up. Mrs. Boggan assured me they called his parents, though no one was as concerned about that as people would be today.
Dr. Boggan practiced medicine here from July 1954 until January 2003, when he retired, making this a total of 49 years! Ms. Iris spoke of how much Dr. Boggan loved doing family practice in Decatur. Mrs. Boggan ran the office, the clinic, and was his nurse for many years. Their daughter Ada, herself a nurse, remembers what a joy it was for her to be able to work with him the three years before he had a stroke. Dr. Boggan passed away in 2006 and is greatly missed.
Having moved here in 1954, Ms. Iris counts her life here to have been a total of 63 years. She said they never moved, as they came to think of Decatur as their home. They had three children after they moved here. Charles, born in 1955, and Ada, born in 1959, live here, but Sarah, born in 1961, a dancer who traveled the world, now lives in Texas. Ms. Iris enjoys her six grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and three more on the way!
Besides working with her husband and caring for the children, Mrs. Iris Boggan kept busy working for the Decatur United Methodist Church and for the community. She had always believed in Jesus, so she taught Sunday School for about thirty years, teaching children all the way up through high school seniors. She indicated that her teaching was to benefit her own children, as well as the many others she has taught through the years.
She was active in the town Chamber of Commerce, being President one year and also chosen Woman of the Year another time. She served as President of the Decatur United Methodist Women’s Association and at one time was Treasurer on the state level of this same organization.
Her example of service and love shown to many, from patients in her husband’s medical practice to children she taught about Jesus, and to many in this community, is one that we could all follow.
