By Billy Davis

Funeral services are 3 p.m. today for Wallace Cochran, 93, who passed away Saturday after an automobile accident.

The funeral service will be held at First Baptist Church in Batesville, where he attended.
Visitation will be at the church from 12:30 until the 3 p.m. service.

Cochran died at The Med in Memphis after his truck hit a tree Saturday morning.

Cochran was leaving a home on Highway 35 South when he somehow lost control in the driveway and crossed the highway, striking the tree, said Panola Sheriff’s Deputy Danny Beavers.

“We don’t know if he blacked out. We don’t know what happened,” said Beavers. “He gained a lot of speed and hit the tree dead-center.”

Cochran worked for the John Deer dealership in Batesville from 1948 until he retired in 1988.

He worked for Graves Oil Co. from 1988 to 1995.

Panolian readers may best remember Cochran for occasional stories about his famous tomatoes grown in his backyard on James Street in Batesville.

Cochran had moved from his James Street home and was a resident at Fairfield Assisted Living in Batesville.

Beavers said he was a next-door neighbor to Cochran on James Street for a short time.

“He was a really good man. It was really tough,” Beavers said of working the automobile wreck.

Cochran is survived by two daughters, seven grandchildren, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Cochran was preceded in death by his parents, by wife Mary Rose, and by daughter Connie Cochran Howe.

See complete obituary, page A2.