Mrs. Willie Mae Deas Blair, age 97, of Jacksonville, FL. passed away Friday, May 15, 2015, at Shands Live Oak Regional Medical Center following a brief illness. Willie Mae was born on October 3, 1917, in Hamilton County, the oldest and last of the five children of Otto and Annie Pearl Parker Deas.  Willie Mae worked hard as a young student and at the age of eighteen, she earned a lifetime teaching certificate. Her early career included several small community schools on the west end of Hamilton County. Students of Blair School and Green School remember her fondly. Her own children remember how she demanded their best when she had to be a teacher first and a mama second. Willie Mae expected each of her students to work hard and so it was no surprise when she herself returned to school and received her Bachelor's Degree in Education from Valdosta State College. Her teaching career spanned fifty years with many of those years in the Duval County School System where she finally retired. Willie Mae was preceded in death by her husband, James O. Blair, son, Robert Olin Blair, and a grandson, James Phillip Blair.

Survivors include two sons, James Billy Blair and his wife Carol of Jennings, FL. and Thomas Dale Blair of Jacksonville, FL.; one daughter, Marilyn Blair Gabany and her husband Bobby J. of Ormond Beach, FL.; eleven grandchildren, nineteen great-grandchildren and one great-great- grandson.

Funeral services were held on Tuesday, May 19, 2015, in the chapel of Harry T. Reid Funeral Home in Jasper, FL. Interment followed at Burnham Christian Church Cemetery near Jennings.