Mother Anna Marie Strother

Friday, July 2, 2022 Visitation: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Service: 12:00 PM

St. John’s Baptist Church 525 Bramhall Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey 07304

Reverend Dr. Frances Snelling Teabout, Senior Pastor Reverend Warren F. McDowell, Officiating Senior Pastor, Prophetic Church of God, Paterson, New Jersey Musical Prelude..................................................................................................................................................................

Processional.........................................................................................................The Clergy Official & The Family Musical Selection.................................................................................................................. “O, I Want to See Him” Holy Scriptures.............................................................................................................. Michael Peace (Nephew) Old Testament, Psalm 31:1-5 – New Testament, John 11:25-26 Prayer of Comfort...................................................................................................Reverend Dr. James H. Barnes Pastor Emeritus, Orient Church of God, Jersey City, NJ Musical Selection.................................................................................................................“We Shall Behold Him” Acknowledgements & Reading of Obituary...........................................................................................................

Musical Tribute in the Hymns.........................................................................Minister Scott O. Cumberbatch Eulogy....................................................................................................................... Reverend Lois Key-Alexander Pastor, Life Abundant Church of God, Trenton, NJ Vice-President, NJSMC Musical Selection...........................................................................................................“Great Is Thy Faithfulness” Prayer.....................................................................................................................................................................................

Funeral Director’s Remarks and Instructions..........................................................................................................

Recessional......................................................................................................................................Family and Clergy Interment Bayview Cemetery 321 Garfield Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07305

Anna Marie Strother was born September 19, 1932, in Jersey City, New Jersey to Robert Lee Peace and Mary Magdeline Peace (Royster), both of Oxford, NC. Anna was educated in the Jersey City public school system.

As a young seven-year-old girl, Anna got her exposure to the Church of God ministry and church leadership from traveling throughout the state of New Jersey with her father, Rev. Robert Peace. While her father traveled with the deacons and ministers to different churches and church events, Anna was right there listening and watching the elders taking in the testimonies and the ministry planning.

She once recalled the secure feeling of resting in her father’s arms, while he conversed with the deacons on a train ride, listening to his deep voice as they rode the train to a worship event.

Anna’s mother, Mary, noticed her interest in music while pecking away hymns with one finger on a church piano.

Soon after, her mother would have different skilled church musicians to teach Anna to play piano and read music.

Anna accepted Christ and grew more and more to love the Lord. By seventeen, she was teaching her own Sunday School class at the Church of God in Jersey City.

Grounded in the Church of God and rooted in the Word of God, Anna Marie Strother was a faithful and dedicated member of the Orient Church of God in Jersey City. There she served in the church for over seventy years under four pastors. Throughout the years, she served Orient Church of God as a Sunday school teacher, church pianist, senior choir member, children’s choir director and trustee board member. Anna also served as the NJ State Christian Women’s Connection President and briefly as the National Senior’s ministry Vice-President of the NACOG. Anna was an expert tailor who made anything from a simple skirt to a tuxedo for prom! She also enjoyed spending time with her ladies of the Red Hat Society in Jersey City.

She loved traveling the U.S. and cruising in the Caribbean. She liked sharing her stories of her visit to Kenya, East Africa where, because of her fair skin, the children of the family she was visiting told their friends she was their “white grandmother”.

Anna worked as an answering service operator, school bus driver, and at Tots World Child Care Center in Jersey City, she was a class aide and a school cook. Anna retired after eighteen years of employment at The Block Drug Company where she not only worked diligently and gained the respect and admiration of so many, but she became “Mom” to many of her young co-workers there whom she loved.

In 2018 Anna moved to Columbus, Ohio. There she worshipped God and fellowshipped with the beloved saints of First Church of God under the caring and anointed pastorate of Bishop Timothy J. Clarke.

Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, mentor and friend, Anna has been a blessing to her family, church, and community as she demonstrated God’s love.

Anna is preceded in death by her husband, Rufus Oliver Strother; her first husband, William Walter West; her sons, Albert Francis West, Roger Dennis West and Russell Alphonso West; her brothers, Robert “Bobby” Peace, Roger Lee Peace, Wilbert Jackson; her sisters, Beatryce Ashby and Reverend Mary Dabney.

She leaves to cherish her memory: her daughter, Robyn Sybil Washington (Dwayne); her son Ryan Oliver Strother (Ingrid) all of Columbus, OH; her son, Pastor Rufus Vincent Strother (Brenda) of Jersey City, NJ; her brother, Alphonso Peace (Alberta); nineteen grandchildren, twenty-six great grandchildren, and a host of her beloved nieces and nephews, family and friends.

PALL BEARERS Michael Peace Alphonso Ashby

Taurian West Tyquan Gardner

Curtis West Raheem West

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to acknowledge with deep appreciation the many e xpressions of love, concern, and kindness, shown to us during this hour of bereavement.

Mortuary service professionally provided by Caliman Funeral Services 3700 Refugee Road Columbus, Ohio 43232

Design & Printing Entrusted To: MLD Communications “The Very Best In Desktop Publishing for over 25 Years” 62 Maple Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042 Reverend J-Anthony & Madelin Dargan Phone: 973.783.6198 Email: mldcomm@aol.com