Onice Gray Strader, the long-time owner of Gray's Camp and Reelfoot Lake's longest-living resident, passed away on December 10 ^th at the age of 101 from complications of Covid-19.

Strader was born on November 13, 1919, in the middle of the nation's last deadly pandemic. A pregnant Ora Gray buried her father and brothers in the midst of the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak before delivering Onice at their home in Proctor City, which Strader described as little more than a crossroads on the way to the north end of Reelfoot Lake.

Strader learned to sew her own clothing and quilt her own bedding long before electricity arrived in Lake County. A self-described tomboy, she rode the tongue of the plow as her father led his mules to farm cotton near the lake. As she grew older, Strader sat on the back of their Model A Ford as her father drove through Tiptonville, selling the fish he caught on Reelfoot.

Strader attended Proctor City's one-room schoolhouse and Tiptonville High School. She fondly remembered watching movies at the theater in Phillipy and the thrill of Mississippi riverboats bringing big bands and even bigger dance floors. It was the height of the Great Depression and Strader gladly took on a regular babysitting job, watching over her young neighbor Carl. 12 years her junior, Strader said Carl Perkins was "very musical," but "ran with a much faster set when he got older." Even after achieving worldwide fame after penning Blue Suede Shoes, Strader said the King of Rockabilly continued to visit her when he came home to hunt each year.

After a boll weevil infestation forced Strader's parents to give up cotton farming, her father George purchased shorefront property along Reelfoot in 1934 at $250 a quarter acre. Strader and her elder sister Eunice pulled out ruined cotton plants while her father built the main store and outbuildings of Gray's Camp which are still in use today on the northern end of the lake.

In her one great act of rebellion, Onice Gray eloped with her Reelfoot neighbor Foster Strader in 1937. Her parents accepted the marriage and encouraged Foster to guide fishing and hunting trips. The Strader's son Jerry was born in 1938 and their daughter Nancy arrived six years later in 1944, prompting the young family to build a home, known as Strader's Dock, a half mile up the road from the Camp.

Their daughter Nancy was five months old when the Army deployed Foster Strader to the Pacific later that year. But the most difficult chapter in Strader's life began when her son died in a car accident at the age of 17. Strader's father died in 1963, and less than a year later, her husband had a heart attack while guiding a fishing trip. Strader swam to the boat and rowed it to shore but was unable to revive him. She was just 44 years old.

Tough as nails but gentle as cashmere, Strader took over operations of Gray's Camp and, along with her mother and sister, returned to hosting families from all over the nation. She fondly remembered serving mayors and governors, some of whom arrived via the new airport just down the road from the Camp.

Recognizing that both Strader and her daughter were struggling with the death of her family, in 1967 one of the Camp's regular visitors from Dyersburg attempted to distract Nancy by teaching her how to fly fish. Nancy in turn encouraged a shy Milton Rice to take her mother out on the lake. The stoic WWII vet,, who had seen the worst of it in Germany, and the vivacious camp hostess found great comfort in each other, quietly talking through their most difficult memories while fishing on the still waters of the lake.

Rice and Strader "went steady," as she loved to call it, for more than 57 years. He took her on her first plane ride, an experience that would embolden a woman who had never left Lake County . She began explore all the great sights she had read about, including Hawaii, Yellowstone and Williamsburg. So afraid of heights that she hated to even drive up the Mississippi levee, Strader even found the courage to brave the winding cliff roads of Glacier National Park in her eighties.

But Strader's favorite place was always at home at Reelfoot. In their later years, she and Rice took great joy driving her Buick through the airpark to count rabbits and watch the arrival of the snow geese. Every year, she greeted the bald eagles and osprey to her little patch of cypress and bought hundreds of pounds of sugar to feed her hummingbirds, counting as many as 150 outside her windows.

As its longest-living resident, Strader was regularly asked to share memories of "Old Reelfoot" and wrote a column by that name for the Lake County Banner . She was often interviewed by historians and is featured in a video segment that can be viewed at the Discovery Park of America Museum and Heritage Center in Union City.

But following Rice's death earlier this year, Strader left her beloved lake for the last time. Tough, pragmatic, yet always optimistic, she knew she was taking a calculated risk moving into a retirement home near her daughter's family in Mt. Juliet . It was during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She was never afraid, always at peace knowing that her time "would come when it comes," with the hope she would see her children again when it did.

In addition to her son, husband, sisters and Rice, Strader is predeceased in death by her daughter Nancy Strader Toy, who passed at the age of 75 just a few months before her mother. Strader is survived by her grandson Robert Toy and his wife Kristie of Greenbrier, Tn., her granddaughter Lee Toy of Mt. Juliet, five great-grandchildren and more than a dozen Rice family members she informally adopted as her own.

Strader was laid to rest in the family plot at the Tiptonville City Cemetery on December 12 ^th , 2020.  A celebration of her life will take place on a future date when her friends and family can all safely gather again, because she was tremendously loved and will be profoundly missed.