When the of our strength and wisdom comes from God, we are like the woman who provided showers life giving water on tender flowers as they grow, beauty and sweetness surround us, and goodness and kindness flow back to us. This scripture describes in detail the life, love and legacy of Dianne Monroe Braddock Huddleston affectionately known as “Mom”, “Aunt Dianne”, and “Grandma” to all she nurtured with love. Dianne Monroe Braddock Huddleston was born as the eldest of four children born in the union of the Stanley Lee Monroe and Gracie Flossie Lou (Edgeston) Monroe on March 3, 1948 in Ripley, Mississippi.
She was raised in the former “Cereal City” near the Kellogg cereal plant in Battle Creek, Michigan. As a young teen, worked for the Post and Kellogg cereal companies and graduated from Battle Creek Central High School in 1966, where she excelled academically while aspiring to become a registered nurse. She further studied and graduated from the prestigious Detroit Mercy School of Nursing in Detroit, Michigan and obtained her Bachelor of Nursing degree from Eastern Michigan University.
Dianne was more than a nurse; she was often called “an anointed angel” assigned by God to care for the tiniest humans on the planet in the award-wining neonatal intensive care units at both Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan and the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She worked tirelessly and commuted between both hospitals full time for more than 20 years. She retired from the University of Michigan in 2011.
In 1968, Dianne married her high school sweetheart, the late Dr. Henry Orville Braddock and the couple shared a daughter, Crystal Nicole Braddock and lived in Lansing, Michigan. As co-parents after divorce, the pair maintained a mutual respect and family bond. In 1982, she met and married Guy Rufus Huddleston.
This union enriched her life with two sons whom she love and raised as her very own, Rodney Davanders Huddleston and Guy Trenton Huddleston in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Early in this union, Dianne and Guy survived the loss of their still-born son Rufus Huddleston and gave birth to their second child, Kamrin Joseph Huddleston in 1985. The couple co-parented after divorce in 1987 and proudly worked hard financially to put their son through college where Kamrin graduated from Clark Atlanta University.
Dianne remained unmarried until her spirit peacefully transitioned into eternity at her home in Conyers, Georgia on May 23, 2019. As the family matriarch, Dianne believed in the bonds of family and unconditional love. She nurtured and cared for all of her nieces and nephews; many of whom she raised and financially supported in her home as if they were her own birth children by choice, or through the foster care system.
Sacrificially, she gave much of her adult life to provide hands-on loving care to her parents until their passing from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. She prided herself on instilling family values of a secure home life, education and self-sufficiency to all the generations of children in the Monroe, Braddock, Huddleston clans. She proudly maintained all of her familial names as a legacy of connection to all she loved.
Dianne enjoyed her sisterhood sorority ties as a member of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc She also served as a nurse in her church home where she was a member of Second Baptist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan until she retired and moved to Atlanta, Georgia to be an essential part of raising her only grandson, Christian Henry Errin Braddock. Christian, whom she lovingly called “her child”; shared a close bond and joy that will be deeply felt and missed.
In him, and many others, she leaves the legacy of fierce protection of her family heritage, and teaching the importance of keeping many family traditions for generations to come. Dianne was an avid gardener whose green thumb touted her with the moniker the “Plant Whisper” and her home and garden was known by all as the plant hospital and botanical gardens on the neighborhood. She could nurse the sickest of plants back to health with the same love and care as she did the hundreds of premature babies she cared for over the 40+ years of her nursing career.
Dianne was preceded in death by her grandparents, Frank Monroe and Fancy Monroe, Ripley, MS; her parents, the late Stanley Lee Monroe and Gracie Flossie Lou (Edgeston) Monroe; son the late Rufus Huddleston; and late husband Dr. Henry O. Braddock. She is survived by her daughter; Crystal Braddock, son Kamrin Huddleston, and grandson, Christian Braddock (Atlanta, GA); sons Rodney Huddleston and Guy Trenton Huddleston (Ypsilanti, MI), one sister Wanda Kaye Monroe Gage (San Francisco, CA), two brothers; Stanley Monroe (Lansing, MI), Marvin Monroe, (Ypsilanti, MI), three nieces; Charlotte Gage, (San Francisco, CA) Tierra Monroe, (Ypsilanti, MI), and Jordan Monroe, (Milwaukee, WI), six nephews Ishama Monroe, (San Francisco, CA) Steffan Monroe (Vallejo, CA), Marvin Thompson and Marcus Monroe (Atlanta, GA), Dohnnie Gage with wife Allessandra Gage), (Jacksonville, FL), and Pryce Brown (Vallejo, CA); twelve step grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins, great grand nieces and nephews and a host of other relatives and friends. To send flowers or a memorial gift to the family of Dianne Monroe Braddock Huddleston please visit our Sympathy Store.
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