Alice Ann Mitchum Fitts

Alice Ann Mitchum Fitts, 85, wife, mother, grandmother and friend, died peacefully Wednesday, July 5, 2017, at her home just outside of Spring Hill as the sun rose over her beloved Tennessee hills. Funeral services will be conducted Saturday at 2:00 p.m. with visitation one hour prior at Grace Episcopal Church in Spring Hill. The Reverend Robin Courtney will officiate assisted by The Reverend Joseph Davis. A private family interment will follow in Rose Hill Cemetery in Columbia. The family will visit with friends Friday from 5:00 - 7:00 P.M. at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home. The family suggests memorials to Grace Episcopal Building Fund, 5291 North Main Street, Spring Hill, TN or a charity of your choice. Condolences may be extended online at www.oakesandnichols.com. Born July 8, 1931, in Davidson County and reared in Spring Hill, she was the daughter of the late Millard Franklin Mitchum, Sr. and the late Mary Lizinka Polk Mitchum and a descendant of pioneer settlers of Maury County. After graduating from Spring Hill High School, she attended Gulf Park College for Women Gulfport, Mississippi, for two years. She went on to earn her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Vanderbilt University where she was a member of AOII. She began her teaching career at Hillsboro High School in Nashville before moving to Anaco, Venezuela to teach at an oil company school. While there during summers, she completed her Master's in Education from Peabody College and met her future husband, William (Bill) Emmett Fitts of Oklahoma while traveling in the Andes Mountains in Venezuela. She returned to the U.S. to Golden, Colorado to teach English at Golden High School. It was in Golden that her path crossed again with Bill and there that they married on June 9, 1962. When Bill proposed he asked her if she would go live anywhere in the world with him. She said yes and so, three months after their marriage, Bill's new job with Oasis Oil took the newlyweds to Tripoli, Libya where Alice Ann continued to teach at the Oil Companies School until the birth of her daughter Alicia. Her son Robert was born there two years later and she substituted at the school off and on while raising her children. She was also active in several gourmet cooking and garden clubs, putting roots down wherever she lived and nurturing friendships that have criss-crossed the globe and lasted her lifetime. Evacuation from Libya during the Six Day War with Egypt led the young family to return Stateside, living first in Tulsa, Oklahoma where their third child Stephen was born and then in Nashville, Tennessee. A job opportunity with Occidental Petroleum later moved the family back to Tripoli, Libya for four more years before taking them to the east coast of England and then to London, England for six years and Aberdeen, Scotland for three years. After Bill's retirement in 1983, the couple initially made their home in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma before settling in Alice Ann's beloved hometown of Spring Hill. A gentle soul who led an adventurous life overseas and always came home to Spring Hill, Alice Ann was proud of her heritage and this community, sharing it with many friends that she had met in her travels. While she thrived on new experiences and travel, she also nurtured her roots. She was most content with simple things in her life, demanding little and receiving much in return, never having a bad experience because she treasured every experience and especially the people with whom she shared them. Her faith was demonstrated each and every day by the way in which she lived and especially in how she treated others, recognizing that each of us has a story and wanting to hear it. She never met a stranger and often made lifelong friends of those whom she had only just met or had only known briefly. She loved to share her home, and her community, especially the views from the top of her hill, reveling in the change of seasons in the dimple of the universe. She was a member of the Cosmopolitan Book Club and a former board member of James K. Polk Association and Rippavilla Plantation. Alice Ann was a lifelong member of Grace Episcopal Church where her family has been active for several generations and has held several roles on the Mission Council. She served meals at the Nashville Rescue Mission for several years taking the place of her son Robert at the serving counter after his death. Alice Ann was also a supporter of the Land Trust of Tennessee having placed a conservation easement on property in northern Maury County in order to preserve some of the greenspace that she treasured so much. In addition to her husband Bill Fitts of Spring Hill, she is survived by her daughter, Alicia Fitts of Spring Hill; son, Steve Fitts of Spring Hill; grandchildren, Andrew Powell Fitts and Brooks Mitchum Fitts, both of Raleigh, North Carolina; numerous and treasured cousins and lifelong friends, Bitsy Gulbenk and the Golden Girls. She was preceded in death by a son, Robert Brooks Fitts, and brother, Millard "Bud" Mitchum, Jr. Active pallbearers will be Steve Fitts, Brooks Fitts, Wayne Laney, Bob Campbell, Pat Campbell and Butch Veazey, Honorary pallbearers include Bill Mitchum, Bob Mitchum, Jere Mitchum, and friends from the Third Saturday Dinner Group.