Mara Lee Rasberry Jolliff

Mara Lee Jolliff (Rasberry), 93 of Orlando, Florida, passed away peacefully 21April 2023. Mara Lee was born in Lauderdale County, Mississippi on August 13, 1929. Mara Lee graduated from Livingston State Teachers College, Livingston, Alabama with a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education and later graduated from the University of South Alabama, Mobile Alabama with a Master of Science degree in Education. Mara Lee met the love of her life, Lloyd C Jolliff, on a blind date in the summer of 1955 and married Lloyd approximately six months later, December 9, 1955. Mara Lee was a career educator, teaching approximately 50 years in the Pascagoula School System. While Mara Lee and Lloyd only had one daughter, they had so many kids in their lives it is nearly impossible to name or count them all. Mara Lee loved all her students as if they were her own children. Mara Lee began her teaching career in the mid 1940’s in a one room schoolhouse in Camden Alabama. In the late1940’s she moved to Pascagoula and began teaching in the Pascagoula School system. In her approximately 50-year career she not only taught first generation, but often taught second and third generation students. Mara Lee was probably best known as a 5 th grade teacher, teaching at Eastlawn, Central, Gautier and Lake Elementary schools. In 1975 she “graduated” to Pascagoula Jr High School and began teaching Remedial Reading to 7 th , 8 th, and 9 th grade students. She made sure her students learned as much as possible, but she was also known for controlling her classroom. Mara Lee taught her students to make butter, the old fashion way, using a churn and raw milk. Mara Lee made sure her students saw history being made by taking the family’s TV to school anytime historical events would be televised during the school year. Apollo Moon landings, Presidential inaugurations, and the like, so her students could witness history in the making.

Mara Lee and Lloyd spent many summers following their only child, Kay, to swimming meets and cooking hamburgers and hot dogs for the Aquatic Club kids at east one or two nights a week. When Mara Lee was not teaching school, she served on the Board of Directors and as bookkeeper for the Aquatic Club. She was a member of Riverside Baptist Church, before she and her husband Lloyd moved to Maryland to be with their daughter and son-in-law. After Lloyd’s death, Mara Lee followed Kay and Dan to Florida when work re-located Kay and her family to the Orlando area.

Mara Lee was preceded in death by her husband, Lloyd C Jolliff; parents, Ernest Clifton Rasberry and Exa Agnew Rasberry; and infant brother, Clifton Rasberry and infant sister, Ernestine Rasberry. She is survived by her daughter, Julia Kathryn (Kay) Volonakis and son-in-law Daniel P Volonakis. She is also survived by a host of cousins, nieces, and nephews.

The family would like to thank Gentry Park of Orlando Assisted Living and Advent Health Hospice for the love, care, compassion, and dignity provided to Mara Lee. We would like to specifically thank the Memory Care East team, led by Stacey Osario and Edise Joseph. They made this journey bearable.

In lieu of flowers the family ask that donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association of Central Florida (https://www.alz.org/cnfl), or Walk to End Alz Team Purple Bees in Memory of Mara Lee Jolliff.

Visitation will be held at O’Bryant-O’Keefe Funeral Home, 4811 Telephone Road, Pascagoula, Mississippi; Saturday, April 29, 2023 from 09:00AM – 11:00AM. Services will follow at 11:00AM in the O’Bryant-O’Keefe chapel, Pastor Joe Prestridge officiating.  Interment will be privately held on Tuesday at Jackson County Memorial Park in Pascagoula.  You  may send condolences to her family or share a memory of her on the Tribute Wall. 

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