We note with regret the death of, Laura Annette Allen Bouldin who passed away at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee, at half past noon on 9 February 2026. Sudden and surprising heart complications had necessitated an emergency hospital visit in January, and when she learned nothing could be done to wholly resolve the complications, she bravely returned home with hospice. For weeks, she was surrounded by family and friends who gathered to her side to care for her as she had spent a lifetime caring for others. Born on February 28th, she was just shy of celebrating her 75th birthday. A celebration honoring her life will be held on February 28th at Belmont Church, 68 Music Square E, Nashville, TN 37203. Visiting from 12-2pm, remembrances begin at 2pm.
In the grandest sense of the word, Laura was a homemaker who used her great store of talents to assure people they were personally considered, liked, wanted, and loved. She was generous, hospitable, gracious beyond measure, gentle in manner, humble in spirit, playful with her wit, and powerful with her skills. She led as a servant does, managing the needs of others, leading them forward by bringing them together.
Welcoming people in was her gift, a gift she worked diligently to tend, a gift she multiplied by working to make sure people were individually invited, received, and honored. One of her many defining habits of love was to hand-stitch a blanket for each newborn she learned was on the way, a blanket embroidered with their precious name. For her, love abided in action, and though she seemingly didn’t need the reminder, a famous dictum hung above her desk: “Preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary.”
As a friend recently put it, she knew how to be with people, how to listen, how to empathize, how to encourage. She was always genuinely curious to know how you were and how those close to you were, and wherever you were in life, she met you there. “It’s a fallen world,” she would sometimes say, acknowledging the hardships of life. And in turn, by the steadfast and abundant way she lived, she emphasized that this is also a world where love is possible. For that possibility, she marshalled her energies to make time and space bend to the priority of relationships, and by her example, she showed those around her how to love one another well.
A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Laura grew up on North Amanda Circle, near Toco Hills in DeKalb County, with her parents, Curtis and Geneva (Bumbalough) Allen, and her younger siblings, Martha and Robert. She graduated from Briarcliff High School in 1969 and is an alumna of The University of Georgia, where she was elected president of the Georgia Alpha Chapter of Pi Beta Phi. The bond she formed with the Pi Phi sisterhood in the house on Milledge Avenue spurred her growth as a young leader and ushered her into a community of belonging she continued to enjoy throughout decades of service.
During college, her will to serve also inspired her to spend the summer of 1971 working as a counselor at Camp Shiloh, a countryside retreat for inner city children, then situated on an estate in Mendham, New Jersey. Her journey north received financial support from Prince Avenue Church of Christ in Athens, and that summer the chairman of the church’s missions commission took time to write her, saying: “May God bless you in this decision to get out of the mold and place your faith to the test in helping others first.” She wrote back: “My experiences have been ones that I’ll never forget and that will help me always.”
The following year, she traveled to Nashville to reconnect with friends from Camp Shiloh, and on that trip to Tennessee she happened to meet Mike Bouldin, her husband of 51 years. And when she graduated from UGA in the Spring of 1973, she moved to Nashville to “The Nunnery” on Lone Oak in Green Hills, where she and Mike spent long spells sitting outside looking at the stars, dreaming up a life together. In 1974, Don Finto officiated the couple’s wedding at Wightman Chapel at Scarritt Bennett, just down Grand Avenue from Belmont Church, where an indwelling and swelling of young believers had converged in the early ’70s, and where Laura and Mike were soon asked to help lead the church’s high school group. The community built around Belmont Church would from that time on be a homespot for her and her soon-to-be family.
In the Spring of 1978, Laura became a mother and motherhood became her. She and Mike welcomed their first child, Amy Annette, that May, and two years later, during a particularly hot August, they welcomed their second, Kevin Michael. Within four years the four had moved south of town to a redbrick house among the maple trees on Meadowlawn Drive in Brentwood.
As a young mother, she remained an active Pi Phi, and she soon became a dedicated volunteer at her children’s school, Lipscomb Elementary, located across Concord Road from the famous WSM radio tower. At Lipscomb she was known as the Ditto Queen, an affectionate title earned by her endless helpfulness in the classroom and by her endless efforts on the ditto machine, a hand-cranked copying device that temporarily stained her fingers purple. She was a great fan of her children and their teachers soon became her eager fans. After they had Amy in their classroom, they vied for Kevin, so they would get Laura, too.
In those days, Laura’s sister Martha lived a close seven miles away on Graybar Lane in Green Hills, and the two sisters practically raised their kids in tandem. Daycare drop-offs at Glen Leven preceded sewing classes at Watkins, cousin visits were enjoyed at preschools and kindergartens, backyard birthday parties were organized, along with frequent sleepovers and trips to visit Mama G in Atlanta. To all her nieces and nephews-in Nashville and elsewhere-Laura was a beloved aunt, known for sending care packages over long distances and for creating handmade quilts to cover college beds and nursery rooms. Each niece and nephew was a dear one to her, and in turn, her great nieces and nephews were splendors in her eye. To them, her attention and affection were elemental. To her, they were wonders.
As she loved her way through life, her will to serve never wavered. For years she volunteered with the local Pi Phi chapter in Nashville and was an active member of the Alumnae Club. She also served on the Board of Christmas Village, an annual Pi Phi fundraiser for the Bill Wilkerson Speech & Hearing Center. In 1989, she was especially honored to serve as co-chair of the Village, an event which combined her affinity for the Advent season with the practical action of practical charity, while at the same time being a perfect excuse to invite friends and family to buy gifts for friends and family.
Many of those who attended Christmas Village also attended Belmont Church, and where there is a Sunday morning service, there is Sunday lunch. So began The Lunch Bunch, an evolving group of family friends who for decades have eaten, worshipped, and prayed together, raised kids together, camped and vacationed together, attended weddings, buried loved ones, and welcomed in grandchildren together. Summoning this group to gather was one of Laura’s joys. The late ’90s and early ’00s were a time particularly filled with ice cream socials and graduation parties, wedding showers and baby showers, and Passover meals on the big screen porch. Party planning for the Lunch Bunch and their children, for her own family, and for other members of her beloved community, was another of her gifts she shared again and again, another of her means and ways of leadership.
Still another of her gifts found form as she searched for, brought home, laid out, and cut fabric to make quilts, most often a quilt for someone else. She was a longstanding member of the Cumberland Valley Quilters Association, and for a number of years, she and her quilting pals travelled north to the quilt show in Paducah, a pilgrimage she delighted in and always returned from with a bevy of new fabrics. In 2004, she started work on her rendition of “Dear Jane,” a 5,602-piece quilt comprised of 225 unique blocks that was originally created in 1863 by Jane A. Stickle. Laura worked on her “Dear Jane” off and on for 11 years, finishing the work in 2015. While we don’t know the exact number of quilts she made in total, we know she made a great deal of them, just as she made a great deal of all her talents.
In the years she took up quilting, she also volunteered to be editor & publisher of the Bruins Doins, a newsletter for her children’s high school. And like her mother before her, she was a dedicated poll worker, proud to manage the rolls on voting days in Williamson County.
And when her children went off to college, she went off to work at the offices of Morgan Stanley, to help pay the cost of two out-of-state tuitions upfront. She was able to retire from her post after just two years, and she and Mike left their kids without any school debt, a remarkable boon and blessing.
In recent years, she spent Sunday mornings with friends at Fellowship Bible Church in Brentwood, mornings that flowed into the pleasure of long lunches at various restaurants big enough to slide several tables together. At certain times of year, she spent long afternoons and evenings cheering on the Atlanta Braves, and come Fall it was all cheers for the Georgia Bulldogs. In her relationship with sports-as in her relationship with people-she was loyal, she was patient, she was there to take the ride with the team, the ride with you.
And when her grandson Oka was born in 2020 she was never more ready to ride. When he met life and started saying “Let’s do this!” like it was a catchphrase, she sewed those words together in a banner of block letters and hung the banner in her house.
She had an inborn knowing of the grace available to her, a grace she allowed to work through her, a grace that celebrated life with others. As a young woman, she answered the call to place others first and heeded the encouragement to “tell someone you love them and watch them grow.” And when she sojourned to Camp Shiloh, she accepted the invitation to “get involved, give of yourself, commit, serve and share.” When she joined Pi Beta Phi she rallied to the role of service and to the motto “Friends and Leaders for Life.” Hers was a life seamlessly quilted together from the strong fibers of faith, family, fraternity, and friendship, and when her body began to suffer a mysterious autoimmune disorder in her fifties, she was enabled to respond with a quiet fortitude that marvelled those around her. Her fortitude was a testament. She, herself, was a witness to that strong power of hoping against hope that weaves a peace beyond understanding.
From an early age and throughout her life, Laura’s imagination and skills led her to work with fabric. Before she was a quilter, she was an expert seamstress, as well as an accomplished cross-stitch and needlepoint artist, who taught others what she knew. She was also from a young age a prolific and skilled creator of scrapbooks and photo albums. She was a natural archivist who saw the future coming and wisely wrote captions on the back of every photo, printed photobooks with dates and data, and meticulously cataloged ephemera, all as a way to hold time and give thanks.
It is fair and true to say she led the way toward the gates with thanksgiving.
When she was laid to rest, she left the makings of a baby blanket on her sewing machine, a garment waiting to be made for yet another new human on its way, a baby waiting to be born, waiting to be swaddled, waiting to be welcomed.
Laura Annette Allen Bouldin labored in love and in love she now rests.
She is preceded in death by her parents, Curtis and Geneva (Bumbalough) Allen.
Laura is survived by:
Her husband: Mike Bouldin
Her children: Amy Bouldin, Kevin & Banning Bouldin
Her grandchild: Oka Bouldin
Her siblings: Martha (Clark) Collins and Robert Allen
Her nieces and nephews: Tim (Amanda) Bouldin, Mariglynn (Geoff) Edlins, Kerry (Alex) Charpentier, Nathan (Morgan) Bouldin, Daniel (Betsy) Collins, Brent (Elizabeth) Collins, Jacob Allen, Seth (Kelly) Collins
Her great nieces and nephews: Willo, Ruthie, Bohannon, Simon, and Henry Collins; Riley and Lorem Padua; Neah Charpentier; Bergen and Lulea Edlins; Allison, Alice, and Nora Bouldin, and their grandmother, Aunt Pat
Burial took place on February 16 at Larkspur Conservation at Taylor Hollow.
A celebration honoring her life will be held on her birthday, February 28, at Belmont Church, 68 Music Square East, Nashville, TN 37203.
Visiting from 12-2pm, remembrances begin at 2pm.
For more obituaries visit our obituaries page.
This obituary was published by Phillips-Robinson Funeral Home – Nashville Chapel.
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