GREENSBORO, N.C. — A memorial service for Davilynn Furlow, 69, who died Thursday, May 2, 2019, at her home in Greensboro, North Carolina, will be at 2 p.m. Friday, May 10, at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Greensboro.

A former Natchez resident, Davilynn died after a seven-year battle with a rare neurological disorder.

Davilynn and her husband Bill moved to Greensboro in 2013 after Davilynn was diagnosed with what originally was thought to be Parkinson’s Disease. In 2015 her diagnosis was changed to progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a debilitating parkinsonism that afflicts fewer than 20,000 people in the United States.

After living for three decades in Southern California, Davilynn and Bill moved to Natchez in 2005 and opened Natchez Coffee Co. downtown the next year. At their shop, she was a role model and mentor to many of her young employees.

Davilynn was a member of the Rotary Club of Natchez and the Pilgrimage Garden Club and was especially active in the Episcopal Church Women, the Historic Natchez Foundation and the William Dunbar Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Beautiful in a hoop skirt, she received at two private homes during pilgrimages and gave tours of Longwood.

Before moving to Natchez, Davilynn had a 35-year career as a journalist, primarily at the Los Angeles Times, where, among other positions, she was the deputy food editor and then a hiring editor, recruiting copy editors from around the country. She loved the newspaper business and newspaper people, even if some of them thought her a little too well-groomed to fit the stereotypical profile of an “ink-stained wretch.” In addition to the Times, she worked at newspapers in Houston, Raleigh and Cincinnati and for several years was editor of the La Jolla Light in San Diego.

Davilynn met Bill when they each were working their first newspaper jobs in Houston, and they married in 1972.

In addition to Bill, Davilynn is survived by her son Bennett, daughter-in-law Deirdre and granddaughter Julia Furlow of Mesa, Arizona; her sisters Dianne Cosby of Ft. Worth, Texas, and Debbie Lambing of Lufkin, Texas, and assorted nieces, nephews, cousins and in-laws.

Memorials may be sent to CurePSP, curepsp.org.