Avis Esther Campbell was born to parents Cora Ethel Snell and Samuel Jones Campbell, on April 4, 1915, in Memphis, Nebraska. When she was very young, her father, a carpenter by trade, moved the family to a homestead near Deaver, Wyoming, where Avis grew up, graduating from Deaver High School.
With the aid of a small scholarship, she went to the University of Wyoming and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in home economics in 1938.
After graduation, she was hired as a Home Demonstration Agent in Torrington, Wyoming, where she lived for the next 30 years. There she met Kenneth Marion Eaton, whom she married in 1946. They had three sons. While raising her family, Avis worked in the family business, the Valley Mercantile Company.
Due to Kenneth’s poor health, Avis and Kenneth moved to Mesa, Arizona, in 1967, where Kenneth died in 1969. In 1974 she met and married Raymond Hensley. They subsequently moved to Sun City, Arizona, where they lived until shortly before Ray’s death in 1995. In recent years, Avis lived at the Sierra Winds Retirement Centre in nearby Peoria, where she died after several years of failing health.
She is survived by two sons, Warren Eaton (Winnipeg, Canada) and Charles Eaton (Williams, Arizona), a step-son, Raymond Hensley (Cody, Wyoming) and family, daughters-in-law, Colleen and Linda, grandchildren, Mark, Laura, Cora, Daniel , Sydney, and Samuel, and great-grand-daughter, Lux. Her newborn son Vernon, sisters, Beulah and Shirley, and a brother, Bion, predeceased Avis.
Throughout her life Avis was active as a contributor and leader in the community and her churches, the First Baptist in Torrington and Bellevue Heights Baptist in Sun City. Avis always had a sympathetic ear for those in difficult circumstances, and she helped many in one way or another during her lifetime.