My stepmother, JoAnne, met the Lord in person this week.
One might say, I suppose, that she had met him in person decades ago, and this was the just the first non-virtual sighting.
As one of her cousins said on Facebook, “The principles, integrity, grit & fearlessness she lived by had a major impact on 100s, maybe 1000s of lives and will be felt for decades to come.”
Jo was a pillar of First Baptist Church, Lee’s Summit for decades. She raised four children and a couple of extras who needed a mother. She cared for the young, and the elderly, and was love personified. Her son Greg was my childhood best friend; more recently my stepbrother. She sang, most memorably in my mind, at my own mother’s funeral 22 years ago.
Next month will be 50 years since I first met her. She and her family have been a fixture in my life in ways that I cannot begin to explain or express.
And then my father “courted and eventually married JoAnne Howard in 2000. Devoted to each other, the couple made their home in Lee’s Summit, and were active members and volunteers at First Baptist Church of Lee’s Summit,” as we noted in his obituary three years ago.
Jo was a dear soul. I celebrate her virtuous and sober life — one so well-loved in service and devotion and the best of Christian attributes — and am so thankful for her role in my, my sisters’, and most especially my father’s life in his retirement years.
She will be buried Tuesday next to her late husband, Carl, just a few short yards from where my father and mother are buried, in Lee’s Summit Historical Cemetery.
Father of all, we pray to you for JoAnne, and for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
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