It is with heavy hearts that the children of Irene Perkins announce her passing on October 2, 2019, just short of her 85 ^th birthday.

She was born on the Brooklyn Road at the family farm in Lower Alabama on November 8, 1934 and named Alberta Irene Cumbie, though she always went by Irene. She was the youngest of the Cumbie children - brothers Carroll, Bill, Marcus and sister Mary Nell – and was a "skirt-tail" child who would tag along with her mother Nell, hands twisted into her skirt. By her siblings' accounts she loved to boss everyone around. She learned to drive when she was 10 and could be seen driving the country roads around her home with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the window. Mom attended Red Level High School and was a cheerleader and active in student government. There she met her lifelong best friends June Foshee, Lindel Moon, Lil Connally, Marita Blair and Anne Grantham. Mom said she never knew she was poor until she left home for college. She attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa for two years but stopped her schooling upon being swept off her feet by Robert Hoke Perkins from Birmingham. They married and settled into home life, while Dad went to law school and Mom trained and began her career as a medical technologist. Dad joined the Air Force and they both served for 35 years – Mom achieving a GS13 rank managing military laboratories. They had four children: Robert Hoke Perkins, Jr of Charlottesville, VA; Hilary Ellen Perkins of San Rafael, CA; and the twins, Leslie Anne (Perkins) Vilardi and Lynne Ada (Perkins) Lance of Pensacola, FL. Mom balanced a career she loved with being a mother and the demands of military family life, wrote newspaper articles about feminism in the 1970s, and was a competitive and nationally ranked master bridge player. She also returned to college to finish her undergraduate degree at Antioch College. After she retired she began a research project that resulted in a book with extensive historical notes about the European travels of her ancestor Daniel Robinson in 1841 following the early death of his wife and children. It is a family treasure. She relished genealogy and has left us all with a greater sense of our roots. Mom was smart and hard-working, and though she loved to laugh she most often kept a serious expression, making her smile all the more wonderful.

While we will miss her terribly, she left all her children well-prepared to love life and find beauty in every day, and we rejoice that she is free of the limits of the physical body and is reunited with her husband, mother, father, siblings, and her grand-daughter Gigi.

Those of us who remain, continue to feel the love we shared: besides her children, daughter-in-law, Jami Montambault; sons-in-law, Mike Lance, Guy Vilardi and Jim Nunally; grandchildren, Henry (w/Sarah Merkel), Malcolm, Cass, Hunter, Chris, Josh, Zoe, and Jensen; great grand-children, Maiah, Nyomi, Jonah and Maggie.

Rather than resting in peace, we see her dancing and full of joy.

In lieu of flowers, please say a prayer or plant a tree, Mom would love that.

Her Celebration of Life will be 11:00 am, Saturday, October 26, 2019 at Voices of Pensacola, 117 East Government Street, Pensacola, FL. 32502.