Ritha Guillotte

A Memorial Service celebrating the life of Ritha Hammack Guillotte will be 3:00 p.m. Saturday, September 17, 2022, at Rose-Neath Funeral Home, 2201 Airline Drive, Bossier City, Louisiana. Visitation will be held from 2:00 p.m. until the time of service. Officiating the service will be Brother Wayne Jones.

On September 9th, 2022, our mother, our everything, Ritha Hammack Guillotte ascended into Heaven. She was born April 23rd, 1949, in Houston, Texas to the late Marvin Preston and Evelyn Allen Preston. At an early age, her family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana where she and her siblings were raised. When she was 16, she married our father, Jack Hammack of Greenwood, Louisiana. With dad, she would begin a life of great adventure and achieve great things. Through hard work, she and dad started and built Hammack Oil Tool in Houston, which she was co-owner and Vice President of. The ‘70s and 80's oil industry was good to us, and she counted herself blessed to travel throughout the U.S. and Europe several times. She loved our house and she decorated and designed the interior of our beautiful home in Missouri City, Texas where she and dad hosted many parties for people in the industry, family, and friends. Mom was a hot rodder. She loved fast cars, especially Mustangs. It's hard to keep count of how many hot rods she owned. Her favorite was a custom 1967 Mustang convertible that was a top 10 car on the I.S.C.A (International Show Car Association) circuit several years running. It was her pride and joy. When the oil industry bottomed out, we moved to Mena, Arkansas where she and our father founded and owned Wildfire Western Wear and Saddle Shop. She loved the mountains and the log house we lived in. Sadly, after 24 years together they divorced. With the western wear store closed she left Arkansas for North Carolina and worked in Marketing/Merchandising for Bill Elliott's NASCAR team. The family was always a priority and that led her back to Shreveport/Bossier City, Louisiana to be closer to her mother and siblings. Mom worked hard at any job she could find to make ends meet. One day a man came into her life that would change hers for the better. Her second husband Lewis Guillotte. Together they operated the tax accounting firm of Lewis Guillotte & Associates in Bossier City, Louisiana. With Lewis, she found a deep love with a quiet and brilliant man. They loved to travel together to Gulf Shores, The Smoky Mountains, and to horse tracks where Lewis's thoroughbreds would run. They were inseparable. Which is good because with as many homes they lived in around Shreveport/Bossier over the years it's amazing she didn't lose him amongst packing boxes. She had a fierce love for Lewis and was by his side until his passing. Before Lewis passed our father had returned to her life as a friend (and as a friend to Lewis) and for many years they felt the joy of watching their granddaughters grow. When our father became ill our mother was there tending to him for the nearly seven months he was in the hospital. She was truly an angel to both our father and stepfather.

Our mother had a deep love for us, her children, and would do anything for us. Often without us knowing. Her advice was always sound. She was selfless and always giving. As children we were a handful, and her discipline was swift. Any whippings we got. We deserved. Somehow her granddaughters avoided the switch. But that's a Mimi's choice to make and she loved her granddaughters to no end. She loved taking them to Gulf Shores, Alabama for weeklong vacations and that's exactly what she did the week before she got her wings and went to Heaven.

Our mother's life on this Earth was filled with ups and downs. From being born poor and having little to marriage to our father and reaching heights she never could have dreamed, to losing it all and then gaining it all back with love, living a quiet and fulfilled life with Lewis, she did something so few of us do. She actually lived a life with no regrets. A devil may care, and you can go kiss a cat's you know what if you don't like her kind of life. Mom was one of a kind. 

Mom is survived by her two children, Janice Hitt of Logansport, La, and Jamie Hammack of Bossier City, La; granddaughters, Ashley Renfro Drew and husband, Cody of Jacksonville, Tx, Josie Hitt and Brandon Bruno of Irving, Tx, Bailey Hammack of Logansport, La; great-grandchildren, Bradley and Brooklyn Drew of Jacksonville, Tx.; and sister, Linda Hawn of Bossier City, La.