Olive Stemmons

(From Fossett-Mosher Funeral Home)

Olive Cornelia “Connie” Stemmons was born January 22, 1932 and enjoyed her earthly life of 89 years until March 26, 2021. “Connie” was born in Mount Vernon on East Center Street to William Earl Smith, Sr. and Regina Merle (Agan) Smith, and grew up at 104 South Vine Street, just East of the Town Square, and across from her father’s Chevrolet garage on Center Street. 

In 1942 at the age of 10, she became a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon, where she was an active member for 79 years.

Connie graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1949, and enrolled in Gulf Park College in Gulfport, Mississippi. She transferred to the University of Missouri in Columbia, where she majored in journalism and joined Gamma Phi Beta sorority. 

There she began dating the love of her life, Robert Lee (Bob) Stemmons, a student at the Law School and a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. Bob returned to Mount Vernon after law school and Connie suspended her college education to follow. They were married on June 22, 1952, at the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon. They had three children, Robin, Randee and Robert. First living on Dallas Street just west of the Town Square, in 1960 they moved to the house at 519 East South Street, which remained in the Stemmons family for 60 years. 

While serving every year it seems as a room mother, den mother, PTA member, Church Elder, Church Clerk of the Session, and substitute teacher in the Mount Vernon school system, Connie finished her bachelor’s degree at Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University). She went on to earn two separate master’s degrees from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in Sociology and Social Work. Her Master’s thesis was “Methods of Jury Selection and Jury Characteristics”.

Connie operated Stemmons Abstract Company in Mount Vernon and Aurora until it was sold, and then worked as a Social Worker into her seventies, at the Missouri State Rehabilitation Center in Mount Vernon, and at the Joplin office of the Missouri State Department of Health. Bob and Connie liked to travel when they could and in their later years spent the winter months in Fort Myers, Florida.



Connie was a champion of the underprivileged. Beginning at the age of 73, she managed the Mount Vernon church community’s diaper pantry. Born in the Depression, when her family would regularly take in people in desperate need, she was a lifelong liberal and Democrat, and was a Delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. 

She loved Mizzou, literature, gardening, animals and art, and was an artist herself. She was a paragon of empathy and social grace, always thinking of others and ready with a quick reminder to the unthoughtful. She displayed keen insight into the world through to her very final days in her social writing, striving for compassion and civil discourse, and entertaining her readers with dry wit and humor.

Connie was preceded in death by her soulmate, Bob, in 2003, her father Earl, in 1985, her brother, William Earl Smith, Jr., in 1993, and her mother, Merle in 1996. 

She is survived by her daughter, Robin Lee Schmidt and her husband, Duane Schmidt, of Little Rock Arkansas; her daughter, Randee Smith Stemmons of Mount Vernon; and son, Robert Earl Stemmons and his wife, Shirel Keller Stemmons, of London, England. 

The greatest joy in her life were her grandchildren, Corinna Lee (Schmidt) Plassmeyer and her husband, Greg Plassmeyer, of Denver, Colorado; Regina Caroline (Schmidt) Duncan and her husband, Matt Duncan, of Little Rock, Arkansas; and Robert Adam Alexander Stemmons, Sophie Anne Constance Stemmons, Jaquillian Lee Nathan Stemmons, and Sara Rose Shirel Stemmons, all of London, England; and her two great-grandsons, Brady Duncan and Evan Duncan, of Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Also surviving are her very dear cousin, Sue (Agan) Casey and her husband, Richard Casey, of California, and her and Bob’s lifelong friends from the Gamma Phi and KA days, Ann and Jack Taylor, of North Carolina.

A Celebration of Connie’s Life, and a graveside service at Mount Vernon IOOF Cemetery, will be held in the summer of 2021, when friends and family will be able to gather. Arrangements are under the direction of the Fossett-Mosher Funeral Home in Mt. Vernon.

Memorial Contributions may be made to the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon, Post Office Box 66, Mount Vernon, Missouri 65712.

Online condolences may be shared at www.FossettMosherFuneralHome.com.