Valley View church to hold Saturday funeral for William Earl Lemons, 87

Valley View Church of Christ will hold a 2 p.m. funeral on Saturday, Sept. 19, for William Earl Lemons, a Gainesville High School graduate who retired from Peterbilt, according to the obituary posted by Geo. J. Carroll & Son Funeral Home. The obituary says Lemons died in Gainesville on Monday, Sept. 14, at age 87.

Visitation is scheduled for the hour before the funeral, from 1 to 2 p.m. Central, the notice says, so those who plan to attend can pay their respects before the service begins at the church. After the funeral ends, mourners will gather for a graveside service, according to the obituary.

Rather than sending flowers, the obituary asks anyone who wishes to give in Lemons' name to make a memorial donation to Hospice of Cooke County.

Lemons was born Dec. 28, 1938, according to the obituary, which the funeral home published under a Lake Kiowa heading. The same notice says he married Elizabeth Gynelle Martindale on June 15, 1957.

Lemons retired from Peterbilt, the obituary says, but his working days did not end there. According to the notice, he went on to work as a starter at Winstar Golf Course.

Lake Kiowa, the place named at the top of the obituary, lies about seven miles southeast of Gainesville in Cooke County, according to the Texas Water Development Board, whose records cover the reservoir and its dam.

Geo. J. Carroll & Son, the Gainesville funeral home that published the Lemons obituary on its own website, lists its street address as 602 South Lindsay Street on its contact page. According to its company history, the firm got its start in Gainesville in 1899, and its present building dates from 1936. Ownership changed hands in 1975, when Bill Brown and his son Robin bought the firm, the same history says.

The arrangements for Lemons include a graveside service. Across the country, the National Funeral Directors Association expects cremation to grow more common. In its 2025 cremation and burial report, which deals in forecasts rather than final tallies, the association projected that cremation would account for nearly two of every three U.S. dispositions that year, with burial at just under a third. It projected that cremation would top half of dispositions in every state, Texas included, by 2035 and reach about 82% nationally by 2045.