Mary Bernice “Nana” Justice Mounts Rutherford passed away at Pampa Regional Medical Center on 8/7/2025, just a few days after a fall that resulted in a broken hip.
Services will be on Saturday, September 27, 2025 at Central Baptist Church at 2 PM with retired pastor Norman Rushing officiating.
She was born 5/5/1924 in Majestic, Kentucky to Ira Lewis “Pa” Justice and Vergie “Ma” Maynard Justice. Pa Justice was Pike County Sheriff, so some of Mary’s earlier years were spent in jail, or rather in the loft above the jailhouse! She grew up around the coal mines of West Virginia and Kentucky (some family members still work those mines) then moved to Perry, Georgia, where several Justice family members resided at the time. However, most of her working career was spent in Chicago, Illinois, where she worked in various factories, including a television parts manufacturing facility in the 1950s, where she demonstrated leadership traits that earned her respect (and added duties) from her male managers. Mary made lifelong friends in Chicago, which is saying a lot, when you make it past 101 years old! She retired from Best Foods in the mid-1980s and moved back to Perry to take care of her ailing sister. After a few years in Georgia, she moved to Pampa, Texas where her youngest daughter resided, and lived the last three decades of her life there, two of those with her oldest daughter.
Mary is preceded in death by: her beloved granddaughter Sherry Raines Walker; both parents; all eight brothers and sisters - Goldie Woodard, Fronie Osborne, Berlin Justice, Martha “Marthie” Mounts, Lee Justice, Virgil Justice, Alice Holley, and Cornelia “Toots” Williams; two husbands Hobert Mounts and (later) Franklin Rutherford; and son-in-law Charles Delano “Nook” Young.
She is survived by: daughters Diane Young and Priscilla Raines (husband Jerry), all of Pampa; grandchildren Michael Raines (wife Christina) and Rhonda Young Hutcherson (husband Dewey); grandson-in-law Alfonse Walker; step-granddaughter Carrie Guidice; great grandchildren Laura “Nichele” Raines Taylor (husband Samuel), Katelynn Raines (finance Kendall Phillips), Raven Hutcherson (Damon Harrison), Mya Hutcherson, and Mitchell Hutcherson; great-great grandchildren Kira Harrison, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Taylor, and Stella Taylor; and a host of nieces and nephews, some with “great: and other with “great-great” titles, who are scattered mostly across Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and her beloved Chicago, Illinois metroplex.
Mary was known to her siblings (and later their children, their grandchildren, and even some of Mary’s own great-grandchildren) as Bernice, but pronounced like “Furnace” (just to irritate her, which worked like a charm!). That little gift stuck with her for close to a century, with most of the current Justice family descendants still calling her Aunt “Burnace” to this very day.
Nana loved to bake cakes and make breakfast. Her biscuits and gravy were amazing, but were mostly reserved for out-of-town visitors, especially family. Her lemon cake, and the very elusive prune cake, however, were locally famous and widely appreciated by all who had a chance to sample them at birthday parties, church events, Justice Family Reunions, or other special occasions.
Mary’s other favorite hobby was sweeping and cleaning, in general. At the spry young age of only 93, Mary’s children unreasonably revoked her access to her favorite cleaning tool - the step ladder. So, for most of the last decade, Mary had to confine her cleaning to floors and cabinets. As a lady who never quite made it to 5 feet tall, her walls and windows just haven’t been the same since (or so she thought). Although she was much slower in recent years, she was still keen on, and swift with, a broom, wherever she might be.
Mrs. Rutherford was a member of Central Baptist Church of Pampa, Texas. She was baptized there on the same day as three of her great-grandchildren.
Mary recognized that her ability to physically live at home at an advanced age was not shared by everyone. So, in 2014 she decided to donate her body to Texas Tech University Health Science Center’s Institute of Anatomical Sciences in the hopes that she could advance medical knowledge on the aging process to benefit future generations.
