Sept. 14, 1939 – March 23, 2011

NATCHEZ — Services for Patricia McRaney Hootsell, 71, of Natchez, who died Wednesday, March 23, 2011, at Natchez Community Hospital, will be at 11 a.m. Friday at Trinity Episcopal Church with the Rev. Walton Jones officiating.

Burial will follow at the Natchez City Cemetery under the direction of Laird Funeral Home.

Visitation will be from 9:30 a.m. until service time Friday at the church.

Mrs. Hootsell was born Sept. 14, 1939, in Laurel, the daughter of Harold McRaney and Catherine Graves McRaney.

Mrs. Hootsell represented the state as Miss Mississippi in 1960, and went on to win the talent award for her art presentation at the Miss America Pageant. She received an award that allowed her to train at the Kansas City Art Institute. After graduation, she was employed by Tom Wells Company in Memphis, Tenn., where she painted murals for the Holiday Inn Company in New York, Puerto Rico, San Francisco, Dallas and many other places.

Pat’s art work is displayed in the Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel, the Mary Buie Museum in Oxford, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

She was preceded in death by her mother.

Survivors include her husband, Sessions Hootsell; her father of McComb; and one sister, Joan McRaney Felder and husband, Richard, of McComb.

Online condolences may be sent to www.lairdfh.com.