Nevener marks 100th birthday
For a century Jimmy Lee Nevener has been getting mail addressed to Mr. Jimmy Lee Nevener.
Her mother and her grandmother shared the same problem, but Nevener put a stop to that a tradition when she named her daughter Virginia.
Carrying a traditional man’s name is one of the barriers that the soon-to-be centurion overcame during her life time.
Nevener was born in Pine Bluff and lived most of her life there. Married at 17, she remained married to John Joseph Nevener, Jr. for more than 70 years.
When her children were teenagers, Nevener was friendly with an interior designer in Pine Bluff and enrolled in a correspondence course in interior design. That led to a long, successful career in design.
She graduated from the New York School of Interior Design and became a member of the American Society of Interior Designers. Her first jobs were for large companies. The family moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, for a few years and she worked for Spears Furniture Company there. In Little Rock, she worked for Steinkamps. Back in Pine Bluff, she worked for Sears & Roebuck for a time, then opened her own company — Colony House Interiors, which she ran for more than 40 years.
There weren’t a lot of style changes over her career, she said recently. Some things don’t go out of fashion. Although she hasn’t really decorated her new home in Bella Vista, she did bring along a few classic pieces that are still in style. For example, a handmade cooper table in her living room is very similar to one featured on TV’s “Antique Road Show,” where it was priced at about twice what Nevener paid for hers.
“She was one of the top decorators in Arkansas,” her daughter, Virginia Ellison, said. Nevener was often asked to decorate a room for shows in Little Rock. Ellison believes her mother’s talent for decorating came from her love of art. Nevener still has a box of pencil drawings she did in high school. Her portraits of movie stars from the ’30s, drawn with a just a pencil, are easily recognizable.
In 2015, Nevener and her son, John, moved to Bella Vista to be closer to Ellison and some of the grandchildren. Nevener has eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. She gets out with one of them almost every day, Ellison said.
“She’s ready to go anywhere, anytime,” Ellison said.
The family planned a private celebration and coffee and cake at church to celebrate her 100th birthday this week.