Deborah Faye McAbee
72, Spartanburg, S.C.
Memorial services were held 3 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in the Episcopal Church of the Advent for Deborah Faye McAbee, 72, of Houston, Texas, who died on Saturday, June 15, at the Spartanburg Hospice House of metastatic ovarian cancer. She was also a 19-year survivor of pancreatic cancer. The services were conducted by Rev. Paula Griffin. A reception followed at the Piedmont Club, 361 E. Main Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302.
She was born Oct. 15, 1951, in Anderson Memorial Hospital in Anderson, S.C., to Edna Williams McAbee, a registered nurse, and the late Willie Hoyt McAbee, owner of McAbee Road Construction Company of Pendleton, S.C. As a child, she spent a great deal of wonderful time with her Williams cousins and grandparents in their house on the mill hill at the J.P. Stephens Mill in Seneca, S.C., where her grandmother and other members of her mother’s family worked as weavers. She kept an old bobbin from the Seneca Mill on her desk everywhere she worked.
She and James Byron Morris of Houston, Texas, formerly of Columbia, were married at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral on Nov. 3, 1990.
She was the salutatorian of the 1969 Class of Pendleton High School in Pendleton, S.C., where she was the recipient of the Crisco Award as the Outstanding Home Economics Student. She received a bachelor of science in home economics Summa Cum Laude from the University of Georgia in 1973, master’s degree in urban and regional planning from Clemson University in 1976 and Juris Doctor with honors from Vanderbilt University in 1984 where she was a member as well as the Articles Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review.
Prior to law school, she began her professional career as an urban and regional planner for local governments in Aiken, S.C., and Dothan, Ala. In 1983, she began her legal career in the Local Government and Environmental Law section at Vinson and Elkins in Houston, Texas. In 1993, she left the private practice of law at Vinson and Elkins and found the great passion of her legal career when she joined the City of Houston Legal Department as Section Chief of the Land Use Section and then as First Assistant City Attorney for Transactional and Government Affairs.
Deborah’s 21-year tenure with the City of Houston coincided with an unparalleled era of development, which gave her the opportunity to contribute her expertise to numerous projects, including drafting Houston’s first Historic Preservation Ordinance and completely rewriting Houston’s development rules that have transformed the face of virtually every area of Houston. She was also a member as well as President of the Real Estate Section of the Houston Bar Association.
After over 30 years of practicing law, she retired in August of 2014. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband moved to her native upstate of South Carolina, which she loved passionately, and made their home in Spartanburg, S.C. In Spartanburg, she devoted her time to needlepoint, daily completion of the New York Times crossword puzzle before breakfast, travel (especially trips to Paris and London), buying and reading as many books as possible from the Hub City Press, visiting fabric stores, spending July in the mountains of North Carolina, attending anything associated with the Southern Foodways Alliance and most of all, the Episcopal Church of the Advent where she was a member of the Episcopal Church Women as well as the Altar Guild, where she served as Directress for the last three years. She was a member of Southern Foodways Alliance Order of the Okra, The Book Club, the Wednesday Study Club, the Piedmont Club and a charter member of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club.
In addition to her father, she was preceded in death by her father and mother-in-law, Liston Lavon (Billy Pat) and Joan Giles Morris of Columbia.
In addition to her husband and her mother, she is survived by her sister, Teresa McAbee Horton (Pat); brother, Willie Horton “Bill” McAbee Jr. (Mary); nephew, Willie Horton “Will” McAbee III (Whitney), all of Pendleton; stepmother-in-law, Jean Hahn Morris of Columbia; brothers-in-law, Liston Lee Morris, of Dallas, Texas, and Stephen Van Morris (Elizabeth) of Columbia; nieces, Anna Morris Woodrow (Mason) and Abby Claire Morris Dawsey (Trevor ), both of Columbia; nephews, Patrick Sanders Morris of Columbia and Van Stephen Morris of Rock Hill, N.C.; two first cousins once removed of her husband who have been like children to her and Byron, Laura Liddell Nolen (Will) and her children Ava, Liam and Oscar, all of Houston, Texas, and James Hunter Lockhart Jr. (Blanche) and his children, James and Paul Elliot, all of Dallas, Texas, as well as a host of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends throughout South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi.
Honorary pallbearers were the members of the Alter Guild of the Episcopal Church of the Advent.
In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Episcopal Church of the Advent, 141 Advent Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302; Baylor College of Medicine, Pancreatic Cancer Research, 1 Baylor Plaza, MS160, Houston, Texas 77030; or the Gibbs Cancer Center, Spartanburg Regional Foundation, PO Box 2624, Spartanburg, SC 29304.
The J.M. Dunbar Funeral Home & Crematory was in charge of the arrangements.
