Deborah Faye McAbee

Deborah Faye McAbee was born October 15, 1951, in Anderson Memorial Hospital, Anderson, South Carolina to Edna Williams McAbee, a Registered Nurse, and the late Willie Hoyt McAbee, owner of McAbee Road Construction Company, of Pendleton, South Carolina. As a child, she spent a great deal of wonderful time with her Williams cousins and grandparents in their house on the mill hill at the J. P. Stevens Mill in Seneca, South Carolina, where her grandmother and other member of her mother’s family worked as weavers. She kept an old bobbin from the Seneca Mill on her desk everywhere she worked.

She and James Byron Morris of Houston, Texas, formerly of Columbia, Mississippi, were married at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral on November 3, 1990.

She was the Salutatorian of the 1969 Class of Pendleton High School, Pendleton, South Carolina, where she was the recipient of the Crisco Award as the Outstanding Home Economics Student. She received her Bachelor of Science in Home Economics Summa Cum Laude from the University of Georgia in 1973, her Master’s Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Clemson University in 1976 and her Juris Doctor with honors from Vanderbilt University in 1984 where she was a member as well as the Articles Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review.

Prior to law school, Deborah began her professional career as an urban and regional planner for local governments in Aiken, South Carolina, and Dothan, Alabama. In 1983, she began her legal career in the Local Government and Environmental Law section at Vinson and Elkins in Houston, Texas. In 1993, Deborah left the private practice of law at Vinson and Elkins and found the great passion of her legal career when she joined the City of Houston Legal Department as Section Chief of the Land Use Section and then as First Assistant City Attorney for Transactional and Government Affairs. Deborah’s 21-year tenure with the City of Houston coincided with an unparalleled era of development, which gave her the opportunity to contribute her expertise to numerous projects, including drafting Houston’s first Historic Preservation Ordinance and completely rewriting Houston’s development rules that have transformed the face of virtually every area of Houston. She was also a member as well as President of the Real Estate Section of the Houston Bar Association.

After over 30 years of practicing law, Deborah retired in August 2014. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband moved to her native upstate of South Carolina which she loved passionately, and made their home in Spartanburg, South Carolina. In Spartanburg, Deborah devoted her time to needlepoint, daily completion of the New York Times crossword puzzle before breakfast, travel (especially trips to Paris and London), buying and reading as many books as possible from the Hub City Press, visiting fabric stores, spending July in the mountains of North Carolina, attending anything associated with the Southern Foodways Alliance and most of all, the Episcopal Church of the Advent where she was a member of the Episcopal Church Women as well as the Altar Guild, where she served as Directress for the last three years. She was a member of Southern Foodways Alliance Order of the Okra, The Book Club, the Wednesday Study Club, the Piedmont Club and a charter member of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club.

Deborah died on Saturday, June 15, 2024, at the Spartanburg Hospice House of metastatic ovarian cancer. Deborah was also a 19-year survivor of pancreatic cancer.

In addition to her husband and her mother, she is survived by her sister, Teresa McAbee Horton (Pat), her brother, Willie Horton “Bill” McAbee, Jr. (Mary) and her nephew, Willie Horton “Will” McAbee III (Whitney), all of Pendleton; her stepmother-in-law, Jean Hahn Morris of Columbia, Mississippi; her brothers-in-law, Liston Lee Morris, of Dallas, Texas, and Stephen Van Morris (Elizabeth) of Columbia, Mississippi; her nieces, Anna Morris Woodrow (Mason) and Abby Claire Morris Dawsey (Trevor ) and her nephews, Patrick Sanders Morris, all of Columbia, Mississippi, and Van Stephen Morris of Rock Hill, North Carolina. She is also survived by two first cousins once removed of her husband who have been like children to her and Byron, Laura Liddell Nolen (Will), her children Ava, Liam and Oscar, of Houston, Texas, and James Hunter Lockhart, Jr. (Blanche) and his children, James and Paul Elliot, of Dallas, Texas, as well as a host of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends throughout South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi. In addition to her father, she was preceded in death by her father and mother-in-law, Liston Lavon (Billy Pat) and Joan Giles Morris of Columbia, Mississippi.

Memorial services will be 3:00 pm on Wednesday, June 19, 2024 in the Episcopal Church of the Advent, 141 Advent Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302, conducted by Rev. Paula Griffin. A reception will follow at the Piedmont Club, 361 E. Main Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302.

Honorary pallbearers will be the members of the Alter Guild of the Episcopal Church of the Advent.

In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Episcopal Church of the Advent, 141 Advent Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302; Baylor College of Medicine, Pancreatic Cancer Research, 1 Baylor Plaza, MS160, Houston, Texas 77030; or the Gibbs Cancer Center, Spartanburg Regional Foundation, PO Box 2624, Spartanburg, SC 29304.