Part - 20 - JoAnne

RAISIN'

20. JOANNE

Mable JoAnne is the only daughter and oldest child of the late Shelton Chesley and Mamie Lucille Parker Hendrix. She has two brothers, William Shelton (Sonny) and Robert Lewis (Bobby). She dropped the “Mable” about the time she started high school.

She was born in the same house that her mother born was, in Whistler, AL. Her parents built a house in Eight Mile, AL soon after she was born, and is where she grew up. The house is located across from Myers Memorial Baptist Church, on Shelton Beach Road, where I met her and where we were married.

She graduated from Vigor High School in 1956 and went to work for Rhodes Furniture store on Dauphin Street in Mobile as a bookkeeper. She worked there until just before Andy was born.

JoAnne had desired to go to College, but the opportunity never really presented itself. Her Father was in poor health when she graduated from high school and he died when she was 18. Ten months after her father’s death, we were married. Fourteen months later Andy was born, and less than thirteen months later, Deb was born. So, she joined me in the School of Hard Knocks.

While I was attending William Carey College, she worked as a bookkeeper at the Auto Lec Store in Hattiesburg.

When we moved to Arkansas, she worked for a while for Midland Constructors and for Paul Hardeman-Fischbach and Moore in Conway in the offices.

When we moved back to Mobile, in 1961, she went to work for Smith’s Sunbeam Bakery where she worked for several years as a bookkeeper.

She stopped working for a while to be home with the kids, then worked for Gail Poole, Interior decorator. Later she worked as Office Manager/Bookkeeper for Consolidated Air Conditioning until we moved to Oak Ridge in 1979.

After we moved to Oak Ridge, she worked as a bookkeeper for Larry Channell Accounting, then for Jeff Day, Accountant as Office Manager. She kept numerous sets of books for businesses around the Oak Ridge area as well as working up tax returns while working for both Accountants.

During the eleven years I worked in Oak Ridge. She began to take some courses at Roane State Community College, in Oak Ridge, while still working, but only accomplished about a year’s work before we moved to Waterville, ME.

When we went to Maine, she got a job with Northeast Laboratory as Office Manager. They had experienced a total crash of their computer system and JoAnne pulled all the lost information up from hard files and reestablished their accounting system into a new computerized system.

When we returned to Oak Ridge neither she nor I could find work for quite a while. She worked with the Radio and Television Ministry at Central Baptist Church as a volunteer during that time.

Upon returning to Mobile, she worked part time for an Accounting Firm during Income Tax Season. Then she went to work as Bookkeeper for Gulf Lumber Company, handling the personal accounts for the Owners. She retired from Gulf Lumber in 2000.

She worked part time for a while at Millry Baptist Church in the office, mostly on a volunteer basis.

She likes to read, sew, walk, play games, do church work, travel, spoil the grandkids, and great grand, etc. We are both enjoying retirement in the country and a much slower pace than in-city go, go, go atmosphere. We don’t miss Airport Blvd. in Mobile at all!

JoAnne is in pretty good health. Except for two major surgeries, she has always maintained good health. She had a Hysterectomy when she was about 27-years-old, then had a very large ovarian tumor removed while we were living in Maine.

Two things that have been bothering her in recent years is a broken right wrist suffered when she slipped on ice in Atlanta in 1996 and an on-going battle with allergies.

Her wrist did not knit as straight as it should, so she’s having some arthritic pain in it and can not flex it as she can with her left wrist.

Her allergies have been kinda hard to control as her doctors say that she’s allergic to stress, as well as dust, certain pollens, etc. She’ll wake up some mornings with “whelps” all over her that, most of the time, will go away soon as she takes a pill. She never knows when an attack is coming. Hope a prevention for this will emerge soon.

Over the past couple of years she has developed a couple more ailments. One is defibrillation of her heartbeat and is on Coumadin for that. Also she has developed Sleep Apnea that requires her to use C-pap machine to allow her to sleep through the night.

JoAnne did about a three-year stint teaching five and Six-year-olds in Sunday School. She really did enjoy working with those kids. But, they moved the classes out to the Christian Activities Center and all the kids sat on the floor in various areas of the gym floor. She was unable to maneuver the up and down and gave up her class. So, she went back into Margaret Hartley’s women’s class.

JoAnne enjoys playing games on her computer and has recently gotten into Facebook.