PLAINVIEW - Caris Larkin "C. L." Abernathy, 89, died Sunday, December 8, 1996.

Services will be at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday in Wood-Dunning Funeral Home Colonial Chapel with Dr. Travis Hart, of First Baptist Church, officiating.

Burial will be in Parklawn Memorial Gardens by Wood-Dunning Funeral Home.

Mr. Abernathy was born in Waco.

He married Hazel Cline in 1928 at Santa Ana, California.

He was an insurance agent, real estate broker and abstracter in Hollis, Oklahoma and Plainview.

He had served in the Army during World War II.

He was mayor of Plainview from 1954 until 1956 and Hale County judge from 1959 until 1971. He was a 32nd Degree Mason and Shriner and a member of Arch Keys Lodge. He was active on state and local levels with mental health and mental retardation, working with the MHMR Center as an independent consultant. He was criminal justice planner-coordinator of the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission at Amarillo, serving all of the Texas Panhandle area.

He was a member of and served as an officer and director of the Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, Plainview Chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons, Hale County Senior Citizens Center, Nine County Council on Alcohol Abuse, Panhandle Association of County Judges and Commissioners, West Texas County Judges and Commissioners Association, Bethesda Manor, Inc., American Association of Retired People and Retired Senior Volunteer Program.

He was preceded in death by a daughter, Mary Patricia Abernathy in March.

Survivors include his wife, two daughters, Betty Jane Crow of Plainview and Carolyn Rankin of Pecos, a sister, Bettie Ricketson of Shawnee, Oklahoma, a brother, E. L. Abernathy of Laguna Hills, California, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

The family requests memorials be to a favorite charity.

Published December 9, 1996.