Tributes

Rhonda Lynn Hamilton, 61, passed away Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at her home in Valley View, TX. She was born to her parents Burel and Theda (Watson) Goggans in Carlsbad, NM on February 20, 1959. Rhonda was the youngest of the five Goggans children. She was raised as a country girl from a bygone generation in Bryan County Oklahoma near Mead. As a child Rhonda was acquainted with making lye soap, hanging clothes out to dry, raising a garden, plucking chickens, riding horses, and wrangling cattle. Rhonda met the sixteen-year-old boy from the next farm over and her future husband Robert when she was thirteen. They married the summer of 1977 when she graduated from Silo High School. Each attended Southeastern Oklahoma University until Robert graduated and they moved to Shawnee Oklahoma in 1979. In Shawnee, their sons Joshua and Aaron were born. Shawnee is also where Rhonda began her life’s work. Rhonda’s life’s work was dedicated to teaching and nurturing children and mentoring mothers. From the beginning of her work, it was recognized that Rhonda had an extraordinary intuition for raising children. As she raised her boys, she cared for the children of working mothers in her home. She began passing on her insights and experience to the parents of the children in her care. Those parents, their children and she formed extended families. Rhonda’s work with children in her home continued when she and her family moved to Pilot Point, Texas in 1994. In her red brick house on College Street, she opened Rhonda’s Wee Care. That’s where she became known to everyone in town as “Ms. Rhonda”. In 2007 after their children had left home, Mr. Rob and Ms. Rhonda went to live in the country. Ms. Rhonda then began working in the Pilot Point and Valley View elementary schools as a substitute teacher and a teacher’s aide. That change in occupation multiplied Ms. Rhonda’s impact on those communities. From those positions, she was able to lovingly and significantly influence the lives of scores of children, teachers and parents. In 2018, Ms. Rhonda was diagnosed with cancer, but cancer did not take her. She beat it back, twice. Two years later after a misstep at the top of her stairs, Ms. Rhonda received a traumatic head injury. She was rushed to the hospital by helicopter where she underwent emergency surgery. Rhonda was unable to recover from her injury. She was taken home under hospice care where she died without pain or fear while Robert was holding her hand. Rhonda’s life and death are examples of how durable and how fragile our lives are. Her legacy is now held in the lives of the children and mothers that she touched. Rhonda is survived by her husband Robert Hamilton; her chosen parents, Larry and Juanita Hamilton; her sons, Joshua and Aaron Hamilton; her chosen daughters, Melissa and Chelsea Hamilton; grandchildren, Andrew, Jonas, Madeline, Annabelle, Elizibeth, Berrett, Liam, and Cameron Hamilton; brothers, Robert and Duane Goggans; sisters, Sharon Hurst and Chequita Randant; and chosen sisters, Judy Morgan, Carol Canavan, and Sheri Hayden. The others that loved and will miss Ms. Rhonda are without number. Service arrangements are pending until a later date. Online condolences may be shared at www.slaymemorialfuneralhome.com. Arrangements are under the direction of Terri Slay and Slay Memorial Funeral Center. To send a flower arrangement to the family of Rhonda Lynn Hamilton, please click here to visit our Sympathy Store.

Tributes

Rhonda Lynn Hamilton

February 20, 1959 - April 1, 2020