When Sylvia Paxton died last year in West Virginia at the age of 79, her obituary read like the typical loving ode to a wonderful small-town woman - a matriarch whole-heartedly dedicated to family.
She was “unsurpassed as a wife and a mother” and had an “infectious laugh and a delightful sense of humor,” the obit read, adding that she’d been preceded in death by her husband, granddaughter, three brothers and a sister.
