Mildred Fay McCraw was born on July 28, 1938, in Raymondville, Texas, but Bowie raised her, and Bowie is the town she gave her life to. She died on May 19, 2026, at age 87. For the last quarter-century of her life she was the most visible and most beloved ambassador her hometown had — a volunteer in a chicken hat who promoted Bowie’s festivals with the phrase “Chicken, pickin’, fiddlin’, fun time” and wanted everyone “to be of good cheer.”
Who Was Mildred McCraw?
Mildred McCraw came to Bowie as a third-grader, raised by her maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. T.E. Hall. She made the town her own immediately. By 1956 she had graduated from Bowie High School as class salutatorian and earned four years as a basketball letterman — a guard wearing jersey No. 32 and a member of the 1955 Class 2-AA state championship Lady Jackrabbits. She was also Bowie’s first female lifeguard and swim instructor, teaching at the town’s first public swimming pool.
That early portrait — civic-minded, visible, athletic, of good cheer — would describe her for the next seventy years.
How Did a Bowie Girl Become a Dallas Lab Supervisor?
In 1960, Mildred earned a Bachelor of Science in medical technology, with honors, from North Texas State College in Denton (today the University of North Texas). She built a distinguished career of roughly four decades at Baylor Medical Center on Gaston Avenue in Dallas, working in the pathology department’s immunohematology laboratory and rising to supervisor of the virology lab. She retired in 2001.
It was a serious scientific career — and she still made time for community-league softball in Dallas, where she earned All-State recognition and a state title in 1963. The pull toward team, town, and shared effort never left her.
Why Did She Come Home to Bowie?
Mildred retired in 2001 and returned to Bowie to care for her mother, Ozella Hall McCraw. What began as a homecoming became a second, unpaid career devoted entirely to her hometown.
She served as a volunteer member of the Bowie Community Development Board, the city board charged with promoting tourism, beautification, and community events — and the organization behind the Chicken & Bread Days Heritage Festival. Her civic life reached well beyond that one board: she was active with the Jim Bowie Days Association, Texas Main Street, the VFW Post 8789 Ladies Auxiliary, the Bowie Chamber of Commerce, and the Bowie Alliance for Education and the Arts (now the Montague County Creative Arts Alliance), and she joined the community effort to save the local rodeo arena. As recently as May 2026, she stood with her fellow board volunteers for the City’s National Travel and Tourism Week proclamation — civic work nearly to the very end.
Why Was She Called “the Chicken Lady”?
The nickname was earned, not assigned. As a Community Development Board volunteer, Mildred became the human face of Bowie’s signature fall event, the Chicken & Bread Days Heritage Festival — appearing in a chicken hat and promoting, in her own words, “her favourite events”: Chicken & Bread Days, July Jam fiddling, Jim Bowie Days, and the World’s Largest Bowie Knife. When the Community Development Board announced her death, it began simply: “It is with heavy hearts we announce our beloved Chicken lady Mildred McCraw has passed away.”
Two sayings are how Bowie remembers her. The first was her tagline for Chicken & Bread Days — “Chicken, pickin’, fiddlin’, fun time” — a phrase that mapped neatly onto the festival’s chicken-and-bread heritage food, its live music, and its championship fiddlers’ contest, and that the festival eventually borrowed for its own promotional copy. The second was her wish for everyone around her: “to be of good cheer.” She was also known for a gentler tradition — presenting yellow roses to mark extraordinary honors.
What Honors Did Bowie Give Her?
Bowie returned Mildred’s devotion with a long list of recognitions across two decades:
- Bowie Rotary Community Service Award — 2006
- Francis Brite Citizen of the Year, Bowie Chamber of Commerce — 2007 and again in 2016
- Fantasy of Lights Christmas Parade Grand Marshal — 2009
- Jim Bowie Days Pioneer Duchess — 2018
- Jim Bowie Days Grand Marshal — June 2019
- Jim Bowie Days Pioneer Queen — 2024
As the 2024 Pioneer Queen, Mildred carried out one of her last and most fitting public duties: at the June 2025 Jim Bowie Days Pioneer Court, she crowned the incoming 2025 Pioneer Queen — the town’s honored elder passing the crown forward.
How Is Mildred McCraw Remembered?
Mildred McCraw died on May 19, 2026, in the town she had served all her life. A Celebration of Life was held on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at White Family Funeral Home in Bowie, with a second community gathering on Friday, June 19, 2026, at The Hall on Jakes Road. In lieu of flowers, her family directed memorial gifts to the Ozella Hall McCraw Excellence Fund at North Central Texas College — a fund named, like so much of her life’s work, for her mother.
She is remembered as one of Bowie’s biggest fans: a scientist who came home, a volunteer who made the work look like joy, and the grey-headed Chicken Lady whose festivals, sayings, and yellow roses are stitched into the civic memory of Montague County. Bowie, as she would want it, will try to be of good cheer.
Sources: White Family Funeral Home obituary for Mildred Fay McCraw (via articobits.com); Bowie News — “BCDB board announces loss of longtime volunteer, supporter” (May 19, 2026), “Pioneer Court, 42 Tournament open Friday’s JBD fun” (June 2025), and Chicken & Bread Days coverage; City of Bowie — Community Development Board roster and Chicken & Bread Days Heritage Festival pages. No rights-cleared photograph of Mildred McCraw is yet available; a portrait will be added once permission is secured.
See also: Bowie | People of Montague County
