Keeping hope alive: Focus on bringing Peggy home

by Amelia Gonzales, feature editor

Keeping hope alive: Focus on bringing Merimon home

The family of Peggy Merimon has been waiting anxiously for six months now to hear that she has been found after disappearing in the late summer of 2006.

Merimon, 61, of Lubbock, went missing from her job at the Lubbock State School on Aug 9, 2006, some time between 11:25 p.m. and 12:15 p.m. She was last seen leaving the parking lot with co-worker Kay Harrelson, along with an unidentified male. Several eyewitnesses have been able to point out a few suspects. One particular male that was seen accompanying the two ladies that afternoon has been identified as a Lubbock State School employee. He is now what police are calling a “person of interest” and has since been put on paid administrative leave. The police have been able to link this particular person with a great deal of circumstantial evidence.

Natosha Davis, daughter of Merimon, says that the media has played a big part in helping to keep the search going, but she said they seem to be losing interest as well, since she has been giving them ideas about how they might get interest sparked again. Davis goes on to say that the press always seems to let out the bits and pieces, making it sound like a completely different story.  Because the family, as well as the volunteers, are needing as much help as possible, the family has set up a fund at People’s Bank and at Security Bank in Lubbock.

“People are just losing interest, and sometimes we feel like we’re fighting this alone,” says Davis. “They have lives to live, and who can blame them? But we will always continue to look for her to bring her home to where she belongs.”

Gearl Merimon, husband of Peggy Merimon, says that the best thing he can say about his wife is that she loved her family so much. He adds that she cherished life and always talked about wanting to live forever. Her daughter says that Peggy enjoyed everything about her life and had no regrets, living her life to the fullest.

“She loved the warm summers and the beautiful snowflakes in the winter,” says Davis.

Gearl Merimon says that their main focus is finding Peggy and bringing her home where she belongs. The next thing on a priority list is to seek justice. He says that regardless if she is found or not, they still want justice to be served to the person who is responsible for taking away such a big part of their lives.

Harrelson’s body was found in late August, and on Feb. 7, the Lubbock County Coroner’s Office officially declared her death as a homicide. Still, there is nothing new that they are able to say about how she died or if there is anything new that could help in finding Merimon.

Merimon is the mother of eight children, including five sons and three daughters. She is the grandmother to 25 grandchildren. She also has two older sisters who are now in their late 70s.The entire family has been dedicated to finding their mother each and every day since Merimon’s disappearance, clinging to hope that she is found alive.

“My grandma was a good grandma,” says granddaughter Lyndi Davis. “I just want her to come back home.”

 

Merimon had been married three times. Her second marriage ended when her husband was killed in a tragic accident, leaving her to raise six children all by herself. Still, she has always managed to be the type of mother who would never miss a parents’ night, an awards assembly or any basketball or baseball games, says Davis. Often, she would have to commute back and forth from different cities just to attend all the things her children were involved in. She stayed completely active in her children’s lives and was able to maintain a full-time job, no matter what little time was available to her.

Davis says that her mother has always been a free-spirited, loving person. Her love for her children and her grandchildren is unconditional. She recalls one memory of her mother is that when she was playing on the ground with her grandchildren and said that she wished that she had six arms to hold each and every one of her grandchildren. Of course, that was before the other 19 grandchildren came along.

Davis says her mother is the type of mother and grandmother who would dance, read, sing, play, and just act silly, all to spend whatever time she could doing what she did best, loving her family. One of Davis’ favorite photos of her mother is one of her playing with her grandchildren while wearing big glasses and silly hair.

Gearl Merimon says that he and his wife had just celebrated their 20^th anniversary on July 23 and were planning a quiet get-away for the two of them. Merimon was hesitant to go, since her daughter Natosha was so close to her due date. Sadly, Merimon disappeared two weeks before her daughter gave birth to her most recent child. This, Davis says, was particularly hard, because she had missed the birth of another grandchild because Davis was living out of state at the time.

“She would call me every day to see how I was,” says Davis. “It was really important to her to be there when my son was born.”

 Davis says that her mother enjoys doing things such as crocheting, traveling to Ruidoso, New Mexico, making up and playing games with her grandchildren and reading. Ironically, Davis says, some of her favorite books were themed around either mystery or murder.

“By far, one of her greatest hobbies was reading,” says Gearl Merimon. “She read a whole lot of books, books of all kinds.”

Before Merimon went to work for the Lubbock State School as a lead secretary, she worked for an attorney for a little more than 20 years. She stopped working for the attorney once he retired. She knew a lot about law and enjoyed working in that field. She then went to work for the City Attorney’s Office, and later became employed at the Lubbock State School. Her job seemed to have placed her under a lot of stress when she realized she was one of the two secretaries left out of eight from the beginning, according to her husband Gearl. She was worried that her job could possibly be at risk and worried that her source of income could possibly be taken away from her.

“Her health was good, but she was beginning to believe she would be the next one to go,” says Gearl Merimon.

Davis mentions that her mother was not too far away from retiring, so she was looking for a job that did not require a lot of responsibility and would allow her to be free on the weekends in order for her to spend more time with her family. Her husband mentions that she enjoyed working at the Lubbock State School and had a lot of respect with the residents there. Since the abduction, Merimon’s husband and her daughter have had contact with the employees of the State School and have kept each other updated about anything new.

“Of course, now we know that going to work there was a huge mistake,” says Davis. “But you just never know when things like this could happen.”

The family has been able to conduct six organized searches. Merimon’s husband says that he goes out and searches on his own every day that he can. They have also been fortunate enough to have various other people go out and conduct searches on their own.    Davis says that one evening the family received a call that three men who had been searching on their own had found a few bones, clothing articles, and even a purse, but none of it could be linked to Merimon. The bones were that of animal remains, and the purse was not identified to be Merimon’s.

The family has posted posters throughout Lubbock County, as well as in Post, Morton, Amarillo and even in New Mexico. A web page is currently being set up so that others would be able to know how the searches are going, what new updates there are, and just a place that others will be able get to know her story and how they can help.

The searches have been narrowed down to key locations in which they believe Merimon may be. The primary focus still remains around Lubbock County and then extends out into Abernathy. Gearl Merimon says that they have been able to realize that she may have been buried, and that they have had the cadaver dogs from Amarillo to search for Peggy. At one point, the dogs were able to pick up a scent about a mile from where Harrelson’s body was found, but the dogs were unable to track the smell for long.

Davis said the recent rain and snow have made the search more difficult. Volunteers are beginning to slowly disappear, and people are beginning to lose hope. The number of people who show up for searches is slowly but surely growing smaller each time, says Gearl Merimon. The family has found that unless the investigators have something new to tell them, they do not hear from them at all. It is the Merimon family that has to go searching for their own answers most of the time.

The family themselves have had to endure the heartache of spending the holidays without their mother and granddaughter. The photos and the memories are never enough, says Davis. Though the family wants Merimon to come back safely, they are ready to hear the worst. Closure and knowledge of what happened to Merimon is something that they have all prayed for.

 “She was everyone of her children’s best friends,” says Davis. “We talked to her every day. She was always wanting to know how they were.”

The Merimons ask for everyone to keep their prayers coming and to keep the spirit and hopes of bringing Peggy back home alive.

Anybody who has any information about the disappearance of Merimon or the homicide of Harrelson is asked to call authorities immediately.

Hardin and his wife, Judy, have two children, Bryan and Sharla, and three grandchildren.