Rachel Mae Silliman Green Beckner, 95, died July 8 in Pecan Bayou Nursing Home in Brownwood. She will be remembered as a devoted and selfless mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, sister, daughter, and friend, and a child of God.
Rachel was born May 16, 1931, to Taylor F. Silliman and Ruth Jones Silliman in San Angelo. She graduated from Kermit High School in 1948 and attended Park University in Missouri, where she studied to be a concert pianist. She married Fred Benton Green in November 1949. In 1986, she married Charles Beckner. In 2008, she moved to Brownwood to be near her daughters.
In her 95 years, she lived in West Texas oil fields, a uranium mining camp in Wyoming, a small city in Ohio, a farm in Wisconsin, and a log cabin in the mountains of Colorado. Since 2008, her home was on Rose Circle at Lake Brownwood, literally surrounded by her daughters and their families.
Rachel worked as a police dispatcher, a librarian, a nurse’s aide, a telephone operator, and many other fields in her life. But her calling was Mother and Friend, and she devoted her life to her three daughters, and the many others she took to her heart and claimed as her own along the way.
She will be remembered for her unconditional love, her mischievous sense of humor, and her stubborn streak. She was bossy and nosy and sassy, and a blessing to everyone who knew her.
She was preceded in death by her daughter, Jillian Johnson, her twin sister Anne, her brother Edward Silliman, and her grandson Jesse Wills. She is survived by daughters Mary Engle and husband Roger, Cathy Bradley and husband Brad; daughters of the heart Sandra Beeman, Dottie Engle, Patsy de la Rosa and husband John, step-children Steve Beckner and wife Janice, Cindy Beckner, and Randy Beckner; many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, numerous nieces and nephews, and friends who cherished her.
Cremation was under the direction of Heartland Funeral Home in Early. A Celebration of Life was held at Pecan Bayou Nursing Home in Brownwood.
The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Brownwood Art Association memorial scholarship program https://www.brownwoodart.org/giving-page-1-1