Samuel Lewis McCollum, age 71, of the Turnerville Community, Clarkesville, Georgia, passed away on Friday, August 11, 2023.
At the end of April 1952, Lewis and Dottie had their 2nd child and called him Sammy. On the 3rd day after birth, it was obvious he needed medical help. He was rushed to Emory Hospital’s Eggleston Division children’s specialty care for infants and children in Atlanta. Sammy would undergo extensive and radical abdominal surgery to remove a large part of his intestines and replace it with a vein from his leg to create a working intestinal tract. Additional surgeries were required to help him survive. This first hospitalization lasted three months, at which time Sammy came home to Turnerville.
Over the next few years, he returned to Eggleston for more surgery to allow his growing body to have room for the new internal organs to grow. He also had some seizures requiring medication to control. In spite of terrifying odds against survival, he survived and thrived. Sam went to school at Woodville and graduated from Habersham Central. He held numerous jobs in his lifetime and in later years as a handyman and laborer. He was a lifelong resident of Turnerville, the place he loved to call home. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018 and had extensive surgery at Piedmont Hospital Atlanta.
During the past five years, he slowed down in recovering, sometimes enduring the neuroendocrine tumors that ravaged his body. His last year was spent in assisted living since he could no longer live alone. Sam’s life should be celebrated as a series of medical miracles and a long life of mostly happiness and joy. We will miss him dearly.
Survivors include his sisters & brothers-in-law, Nancy & Don Higginbotham; Angela & George MacMillan, all of the Turnerville Community, Clarkesville, GA; brother & sister-in-law, Andy & Margaret McCollum of Statham, GA; as well as numerous nieces & nephews.
A Celebration of Life service will be held at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, August 19, 2023, at the Hillside Memorial Chapel in Clarkesville.
An online guest registry is available for the McCollum family at www.HillsideMemorialChapel.com.
Arrangements are in the care & professional direction of Hillside Memorial Chapel & Gardens of Clarkesville, Georgia. (706) 754-6256
