Update: Video: Nunnelee Remembered, Family Urges Gifts to Charities

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Nunnelee

UPDATE: Funeral Details

W.E. Pegues Funeral Directors are in charge of arrangements.

Sunday, February 8

2:00 – 5:00 p.m. CST in TUPELO: Visitation will be held at the Calvary Baptist Church located at 501 West Main Street.

Monday, February 9

12:00 – 2:00 p.m. CST in TUPELO: Visitation will be held at the Calvary Baptist Church located at 501 West Main Street.

2:30 p.m. CST in TUPELO: Services will be held at the Calvary Baptist Church located at 501 West Main Street.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial contributions be made in honor of Alan Nunnelee to:

New Beginnings

2164 Southridge Drive

Tupelo, MS 28801

Tupelo Children’s Mansion

P.O. Box 167

Tupelo, MS 38802

NORTH MISSISSIPPI (WCBI) — Patrick Alan Nunnelee was born on October 9th, 1958 in Tupelo, Mississippi. The Lee County native, graduated from Clinton High School in 1976. Before moving to Clinton, he spent some of his earlier childhood years in Lowndes County. Nunnelee attended Mississippi State University, where he served in his first political position in the Student Association. That is where a corneal disease left him blind. After restorative, surgery he once told his alma mater. ‘When I lost my sight, I found that God compensates by strengthening something else.’

It was that strength and determination that further led him to a life of politics.

“Let me tell you about the first political confrontation with Alan. I am going to say it was in 1976 or 77 at Mississippi State University. He walked up to me and said, ‘Holland, I am going to be President of the United States one day.And I said, ‘ I won’t be a bit surprised Alan,” says Representative Steve Holland, (D) 16TH District.

In 1995, Nunnelee went on to represent Lee and Pontotoc Counties in the Mississippi state Senate. There he climbed the ladder of leadership, sitting on the Senate Appropriations Committee and serving as chairman of the Public Health Committee.

“I happened to be in the office when he announced he was running for the Mississippi state Senate,” says long time friend and Chairman of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee Mike Maynard.

“He was about as opposite me as politically as you could get. We shared public health together for four years. We had lots of things to do on behalf of the state, and even though we were diametrically opposed, phyllisophically, we always came together,” added Holland.

Elected to the 112th Congress in 2010, the Republican took his conservative values to the United States House of Representatives. He served in the House Appropriations Committee, as well as several other subcommittees that focused on agriculture, energy and military affairs.

“He was on the Appropriations Committee, which speaks a lot. Saying that a Junior Congressman from Mississippi would be on such an important committee. He did tell me one time that there was no way he was going to cut the military, and he always took people’s advice in the 1st District,” says Maynard.

“I think it was honesty as much as anything. He was a staunch conservative, and he made no bones about it. He lived that philosophy and practiced that, but he was yielding. He knew how to bring things to the middle,” says Holland.

He was easily re-elected to represent the 1st District in November of 2014, despite his declining health. Nunnelee underwent surgery in June of 2014, after doctors had discovered a mass on his brain. Unable to return to Washington, he was sworn into his third term, while at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. He then received the news that the cancer had returned, and there were no more treatment options available. He died at his home in Tupelo, on Friday, February 6th.

He is survived by his wife, Tori, and their three children: Reed, Emily and Nathan Nunnelee. He was 56 years old.