Earnesta Lee McClanahan

Funeral services for Earnesta McClanahan will be held at 2 PM, Thursday, August 22, 2024, from the chapel of Riser Funeral Home, Columbia, with Bro. Billy Lane McClanahan officiating. Interment will be at Bethany Cemetery under the direction of Riser Funeral Home. The family will have visitation on Thursday, at the funeral home from noon until the service begins at 2 PM.

Earnesta Lee Duchesne McClanahan, known as "Earnie" to many, was born September 4, 1951, in Columbia, Louisiana, to the union of her parents, Ernest Duchesne and Letha Lee Duchesne, and she passed from this life on August 21, 2024, at Cornerstone Hospital, West Monroe, Louisiana. She was the fifth of nine daughters. Earnesta was a highly motivated and disciplined self-taught piano player as a teenager. She could and would learn to play any song. She worked as a cosmetologist after graduating from Cloyd's Beauty School, Monroe, Louisiana and later at the Caldwell Parish Sheriff's Department for many years. She was preceded in death by the father of her son, Charles Kennon McClanahan; her parents; and three of her sisters: Letha Smith, Lynda Meredith, and Zelda Moore.

Those left to cherish her memory are her son, Charles Ryan McClanahan (Danielle); grandson, Cade Ryan McClanahan; sisters: Mary Gilley, Phyllis Maxwell (Allen), Peggy Aycock (Richard), Rhonda Washam (Robert), and Wanda Blackmon; nephews: Edge Crum (Kendra), Gary Gilley, Robert Smith, Chris Moore (Cherie), Matthew Carson (Kaitlynn), and Ben Washam; niece, Honi Meredith (Bart); and a host of great nieces and great nephews.