Pamela Lawhead

Pamela Anne Blass Lawhead, age 81, passed away peacefully in her home on September 9, 2025. She was surrounded by adoring family and friends. The funeral service will be held on Monday, September 15, 2025, at 3:00 P.M. at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church with Father Mark Shoffner officiating. Visitation will be held prior to the service beginning at 1:00 P.M. Burial will follow at College Hill Cemetery. Waller Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Pam was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas on August 28, 1944 to the late Joel and Marion Blass. When Pam was 3, her family moved to Wiggins, Mississippi where her father started a law practice. Pam and her three sisters had a delightful childhood in rural Wiggins, with goats and horses as their companions and rides in their father’s airplane.

During her high school years, Pam was a residential student at Dominican High School in New Orleans. The Dominican nuns who taught her were so inspiring that she decided to join their order after graduation. Later in life, people who first met her could not believe that for five years she was a novice nun in a full medieval habit. Throughout this time, she was sustained by her love of God and love of service to people, but it was not a good fit. Her unrestrained enthusiasm and over the top personality did not fit well with the submissive demeanor that was expected of her in this very traditional order. Hence, like Maria in the Sound of Music, she left the order to search for another way to share her talents.

She finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Mississippi, where her father was then on the Law School faculty. After that, she went on to do graduate work in philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin for several years. It was there that she first met her future husband Bill, who also was a philosophy graduate student. Although graduate work was strenuous, Pam and Bill enjoyed an idyllic dating life together in Austin as hippies in the 1960s.

After dating Pam for several years, Bill realized his life would be diminished without this girl. So, he worked up the courage to “pop the question.” Since they were both scholars and avid book collectors, the question Bill asked Pam was “Would you like to consolidate our libraries?” Her enthusiastic “yes” answer was the greatest moment in his life. Bill got a wonderful lifetime companion, who shared her love and laughter with him–and, yes, as an added bonus, he got some really good books. They were married in St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Oxford, Mississippi on July 31, 1971.

The first nine years of their marriage took them to small towns in Kansas and the Chicago suburbs, where Bill taught philosophy. In 1975 and 1977 Bill and Pam were blessed with two wonderful sons, Joel and Andy. Pam’s approach to motherhood was the same as every other event in her life. First, there was research in the scholarly literature on the topic as then a passionate commitment of her whole being to the project.

The harsh winters in Kansas and Chicago were rough on this Mississippi gal. But it was the historic Chicago Blizzard of 1979 that broke both their spirits. So, when a philosophy job opened up at the University of Mississippi in 1980, the two of them were delighted when Bill was chosen to fill the position. They lived the remaining 45 years of their life together in Oxford, Mississippi, raising their two boys, mentoring college students, making close friends, and enjoying the small community life and cultural riches of this town.

When her sons started school, Pam and a friend created a chapter of the Parent Teacher Organization. She was active in this organization in each of her sons’ grades until they graduated from high school. She was so successful at this that, when her sons graduated, parents and teachers begged her to adopt their children so that she would stay active in the school system.

In Oxford, Pam and Bill were active in St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. They spent many years working with the college students there. This included working with student teams on Search, the annual college student retreat. Sunday afternoons were spent cooking spaghetti supper at the church. After the evening student service, the spaghetti suppers provided a cheap meal and community to the students. A number of these students, from as long as 40 years ago, still kept in touch with her.

Once Pam’s boys were in school, Pam searched for her next mission in life. Through happenstance or, perhaps, divine providence, Pam discovered that the University was starting a new graduate program in computer science. Since she had an undergraduate minor in math and, as a philosophy graduate student, she enjoyed courses in advanced symbolic logic, she was a natural fit for the new program. She earned her master’s degree and began teaching computer science while working on her Ph.D., which she completed in 1994.

Teaching was Pam’s passion. Throughout the twists and turns of her life she taught every level from pre-school children to Ph.D. students. During her years at Ole Miss, her relationship to students was that of an effective but demanding teacher, a mentor, a life coach, a therapist, a surrogate mother, and a career consultant. In 1995 the University of Mississippi established the Frist Award which was awarded each year to one faculty and staff member who went above and beyond their normal responsibilities to provide extraordinary service to students. Pam was honored by being the first faculty recipient of this award.

Although her main love and greatest skill was teaching, she distinguished herself by getting grants which enabled her to provide employment to teams of graduate students. This included a $15 million grant from NASA, with which she created and directed the Institute for Advanced Education in Geospatial Science. She also received grants from major foundations and corporations such as the National Science Foundation, Pearson Publishing, and IBM.

Pam was a problem solver. She could not stand to see a bothersome problem that no one was addressing. Hence, she always had a cause. The cause could be helping a lonely student adjust to Ole Miss. On the other hand, the cause could involve taking on City Hall, corporations, or people in power. While she frequently won her battles, she was incurably idealistic and sometimes overly confident about her ability to “slay giants.” For this reason, her former philosophy chairman at Texas gave her a Don Quixote figurine as a wedding present. It was a whimsical symbol of his admiration of her unquenchable spirit and passionate desire to make things right. For students, family, friends, and townspeople, Pam was known for offering a sympathetic ear, practical advice, and an inspired action plan.

The joy of her life was her six grandchildren. Following the example of her French grandmother, she had the grandchildren call her “Mere.” Since she never had any little girls of her own, she loved learning the craft of smocking and making heritage style dresses for her five granddaughters. Of course, she also enjoyed making little boy outfits for her one grandson.

To give the grandchildren a broader view of the world, Mere and Granddad would take the grandkids two at a time, and around the age of 12, for a brief stay in London and sometimes Paris. As a result, many of them considered a study abroad semester to be an essential part of their college education.

In the latter part of their life together and especially in retirement, Pam and Bill’s favorite activity was river cruises and international travel. They crossed the Atlantic several times and traveled through Great Britain, Europe, Eastern Europe, and China. For their 50th wedding anniversary in 2021, they took a trip from Venice to Paris on the legendary Orient Express. For many years, one of their treasured experiences was renting their favorite apartment in Paris for the month of October each year. Pam was their travel agent and enjoyed spending hours on the Internet finding bargains and new travel adventures.

Pam was preceded in death by her parents, Joel and Marion Blass, and her sisters Sandy Fries and Marion “Mike” Couvillion.

Pam is survived by Bill, her husband of 54 years; two sons, Joel (Julie) and Andrew (Christin); her sister, Marie Faust (Jimmy); six grandchildren, Lauren, Will, Lillie, Layton, Lainie, and Bess; and multiple dear cousins, nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews.

Memorial donations may be made in Pam’s name to the scholarship fund named after Bill’s and Pam’s parents. Checks may be made out to the University of Mississippi Foundation. Please direct your gift to the Lawhead-Blass Philosophy and Religion Endowment in memory of Pamela Lawhead. Gifts may be made by phone at 662.915.5944, or by mail: The University of Mississippi Foundation, 406 University Avenue, Oxford, MS 38655.