Paul Sumrall Poole of Collierville, TN passed away January 23rd, 2022 at St. Francis hospital in Memphis after battling complications from a stroke on Dec 17th. Paul was born in Laurel, MS on April 12th, 1945. Paul graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a degree in Computer Science in 1969 (the first year it was offered). Prior to this he had worked for NASA on the rocket systems that would take men to space and the moon. After graduating, he worked at the Gulf Coast Research lab until 1978. Later working for Mobil Oil, Varco Pruden (84-97), Federal Express (97-13 retired). After retiring from FedEx he worked 2 years at International Paper (14-16), then joined the Memphis Police Department as a contract programmer (18-present), where he was able to implement several huge time saving programs for crime data analysis.

You may have met people that spoke 2 or 3 languages before, but when it came to computers, Paul spoke every language. And any that he didn't know, he learned. Here's just a few of the ones he listed on his resume: Java , C, C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, BASH, Expect, Autoit, SQL DB query language, REXX, HTML. He had over 50 years programming experience.

Paul was also in the Mississippi National Guard from 1968 to 1975, and assisted with the cleanup from hurricane Camille.

Father to 5 sons, he loved camping and had been all over Arkansas (his favorite camping destination) making lasting memories in all who went on these trips. He was into classic cars and prompted a lifelong love of Land Rovers in several of his family members with the purchase of his 1967 Land Rover in 1985. He also fostered a love of trains in several of his sons. He was an expert table tennis player and passed this skill on as well. He loved meeting and talking to people, often stopping to talk to veterans and anyone else who wanted to tell him their story, which they always did.

Paul leaves behind, his wife Bobbye Poole and her two daughters Mary and Angela and their children, a sister Pam Shirley, brother Richard, stepbrother Roy, uncle Keith Sumrall, former wife, Martha Gunn Poole and their sons Nathan, Griffin, and John Duncan. He was preceded in death by two of their sons, Paul Jr. and Peter.

Visitation will be held on Friday 1-28-22 at noon at Ellisville Funeral Home. Graveside service to follow at 1:pm at Bethel Methodist Cemetery.

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