Mildred Imogene Harden

91 year old Mildred Imogene Harden of Smithville died Sunday at DeKalb Community Hospital. She was a member of the First Baptist Church for 77 years, co-owner of Harden’s Plumbing and Electric for 28 years and Jenkins and Darwin for 19 years. The funeral will be Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. at the Chapel of Love-Cantrell Funeral Home. Burial will be in DeKalb Memorial Gardens. Visitation will be Tuesday from 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. and Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. until the time of the service at 11:00 a.m. She was preceded in death by her husband, Alton Harden; her parents, Benton and Maggie Martin Sanders; two brothers, Franklin P. Sanders and Carl M. Sanders. Survivors include one brother, Benton Sanders, Jr. and his wife Violet of Smithville. Two sisters, Willlene Sanders Finley of Sparta and Bessie Sanders Ray of Orlando, Florida. A sister-in-law, Lois Steadman of Madison. A host of nieces, nephews, great nieces, great nephews, friends, and business associates also survive. Love-Cantrell Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements. The family has requested that donations be made to the Smithville First Baptist Church in memory of Ms. Imogene, in lieu of flowers.
****Love-Cantrell Funeral Home would like to publicly apologize to the Imogene Harden family due to an oversight that took place on Mrs. Hardens obituary as it ran on WJLE on Sunday and Monday morning while arrangements were still pending. The error involved a line that had failed to be erased from the computer program that we use to send all of our obituaries to WJLE. The line incorrectly stated that the family had asked for donations to be made to Love-Cantrell Funeral Home to help with funeral expenses. This statement was at the bottom of the page where it had ran on a previous obituary that had been sent to WJLE just days before Mrs. Harden’s death and our staff failed to delete it while updating the obituary information. Mrs. Harden was an asset to this community and, along with her husband Alton, worked hard and saved to assure that she was in no way a burden to anyone. Mrs. Harden pre-planned her funeral with us and paid the balance in full many years ago. Thus no donations are needed for expenses because no expenses were left unpaid. Mrs. Imogene Harden was a dear friend to our family and we are all deeply sorry that this mistake was made. In no way was this done intentionally as our respect for Mrs. Harden was much too great.******