On Saturday morning, September 6, 2025, at Bayhealth Hospital—Kent Campus in Dover, Delaware, Henrietta “Cissie” Reaves-Overton peacefully rested after years of medical challenges that culminated with an unexpected battle with cancer.

 

Cissie, as she was lovingly called, brought joy to all who knew her. Love, compassion, and unwavering faith in God marked her journey on this earth. Her family, friends, and everyone she touched are heartbroken by her passing. Remember her not for the way her life ended, but for the way she lived.

 

Cissie, born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on December 22, 1952, to the late Sylvia Veronica Wilson, introduced her 5-year-old sister Helen (deceased), and three years later, her brother William was born. Sylvia later wed Walter A. Reaves, Sr., of Hopewell, Virginia (deceased) who had a daughter named Jacqueline (deceased). From this union, another daughter (Regina) and son (Walter, Jr.) were born. God blessed this blended family with His love, joy, lots of adventures, and many talents—musicians, artists, poets, crafters, writers, seamstresses, and much more.

 

The Reaves children grew up at the Macedonia SDA Church. It was in Macedonia where Cissie’s love for music blossomed and where she and the Tillery girls (Vanessa and Cookie) formed the popular trio, The Blendettes.

 

Cissie was educated in the Chester school system and graduated from Chester High. Her favorite sports in junior and senior high were basketball and softball. She enjoyed stealing the basketball from the neighborhood boys with such finesse they never saw her coming. Another favorite pastime was dancing. She and her friends spent hours practicing dance steps and inventing new ones. As a writer and poet, Cissie could often be found bent over paper and pen creating written works of art.

 

After high school, Cissie worked for many years as an administrative assistant and billing and coding specialist at Hahnemann University Hospital and Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. She married Charles Edward Overton 3rd in 1982 and, a few years later, gave birth to their daughter, Veronica Grace Overton.

 

In later years, she pursued a career in teaching, receiving a bachelor’s degree in K–12 education from Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts, and a master’s degree in special education from Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania. She dedicated her teaching career to autism support at Philadelphia’s Gillespie Elementary School until her retirement. If a parent could not make it to a parent-teacher meeting, Cissie would go to them.

 

You could find her sitting with a parent at their home on the front porch or chatting on the steps about their child’s progress. She continued teaching through a tutoring service after she retired.

Cissie embraced life as a journey and welcomed exploration. Always ready for a road trip, she showed up for her family, friends, students, and neighbors, celebrating milestones, triumphs, and heartbreaks. And oh, the stories many of us have from those road trips.

 

Cissie was present for every family event—holidays, birthdays, weddings, school programs, music and dance recitals, graduations, cookouts, shopping trips (she loved thrift shopping and estate sales), and just to hang out. At Christmastime, she showed up with bags of gifts. She carefully wrapped and decorated even a Chapstick. It was important to her that everyone had a gift to open. She also loved gardening and crafting, especially painting birdhouses, and looked forward to family craft nights at her niece Felice’s house.

 

She supported family and friends through tough times, burning the rubber to be with them wherever they were or to take them wherever they needed to go. Even during her chemotherapy, she drove a senior friend to and from the grocery store each week.

 

Every summer Cissie traveled to Georgia with her long-time friend, Shirley, to check on Shirley’s dad, as well as for summer visits to Tetotum, Virginia, with Cousin Princess to hang out with the Brown’s side of the family. Cissie and her childhood friend, Vanessa, took road trips to California to support a friend. Yes, they drove all the way.

 

We can all say on some level, Cissie was our “ROADPAL” (as labeled on her license plate). She shared our journeys as we navigated life’s curves and potholes. She laughed with us, cried with us, and fought for and beside us.

 

She leaves to continue this legacy: her husband, Charles, of 43 years, and their daughter, Veronica; her siblings: William Reaves (LaVanna) from Camden, Delaware; Regina Reaves Hayden from Beltsville, Maryland; Walter Reaves, Jr. (Arlisa) from Elkton, Delaware; her paternal aunts and uncle: Hattie Bethune, Thomas and Eva Reaves, and Berniece Reaves of Hopewell, Virginia; a host of family and friends, and her favorite furry friends: her cat Logan and her nephew pup Oreo.

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