"SUZY" REID DACUS

SUE REID DACUS, a vivacious Cordova widow whose name once graced a multi-state chain of convenience stores, died Saturday at a Memphis nursing home where she was struggling to recover from a series of falls. She was 82.

Funeral services for Mrs. Dacus were conducted at 11 A.M. Thursday, October 22nd at the Cordova Presbyterian Church with Rev. Tom Pickering, Pastor of the church, officiating. A private family interment followed in the Burrow Cemetery at Galloway. Arrangements were provided by Peebles Fayette County Funeral Homes-Main Chapel of Somerville.

Mrs. Dacus was born in Pine Bluff, Ark., and grew up in a prominent family in the small town of Trenton. Betty Sue Reid, as she was known then, was a gregarious, athletic student.

After graduating from Peabody High School, she went on to Murray State University, where she majored in home economics and excelled at tennis. One semester shy of her college graduation, she left school to prepare for her marriage in June 1949 to Peter Bird, a young advertising executive from Illinois who had landed a job with an ad agency in Muncie, Indiana.

While there, the newlyweds were admired for enthusiastic entertaining, and the young bride began developing skills as a gourmet cook. Inventive cooking turned out to be a lifelong passion, and she was known to give away cakes and cookies to everyone she knew.

Over the years, she won several national cooking contests. Later the couple moved to Indianapolis, where Mrs. Bird continued to stage creative parties and undertake civic activities ranging from the Indianapolis Symphony Guild to the League of Women Voters.

After the marriage ended in the mid-1960s, Mrs. Bird returned to Trenton with her two younger children, and worked at her brother Hughes Reid's Rexall Pharmacy.

In the 1970s, she started a chain of convenience stores called Suzy's Foods, which sold her signature fried chicken in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi.

In the 1980s, she married Milton Dacus, executive vice president of the P.A. Clayton wholesale grocery company, and enjoyed living in a 100-year-old farmhouse in what was then the sparsely populated town of Cordova. Mr. Dacus died in 1994, and Mrs. Dacus continued to live independently, becoming involved in the Germantown Community Theater and the AARP.

Even after falls that impaired mobility, she tooled around Cordova with an electric scooter perched on the back of her car for shopping and errands. If she needed assistance, she was known to stick her head out the driver side of the car and shout, "Hey, does anybody want to help an old lady?" Assistance was always forthcoming.

Mrs. Dacus leaves two sons, Peter Bird Jr. of Nashville and Joel Bird of Arlington, their spouses Karen and Michelle, son-in-law Jim Blythe, six grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Her daughter, Carol Blythe died in 2008.

The family requests that memorials be directed to the Germantown Community Theatre, The Cordova Presbyterian Church or the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville.