Jesse Lee Ingram
April 17, 1933 – April 11, 2007
Jesse Lee Ingram, 73, of Staircase Mountain, Collettsville, NC, was a member of the Edgemont Baptist Church. He served his country in the Korean War in the United States Navy. After marrying his sweetheart, Doris Crump Ingram, he founded the College Barber Shoppe in Williamsburg, VA in 1960. He then moved his wife and three daughters, Linda, Debra, and Kellie, down to North Carolina and founded Jesse’s Barber Shop in Whitnel, NC in 1974. After 45 years of barbering, he decided that it was time to retire, but all of his adventures didn’t stop there. Whenever he wasn’t cutting hair, he was joyfully hunting, fishing, gardening and riding his four-wheeler. He also showed great pride in his four grandchildren, Justin, Amie, Kayla, and Jasmine. He was also blessed with a great granddaughter Addison. Jesse was a very kind and compassionate person; he was a simple man who loved his family, friends and outdoors. He will be fondly remembered and missed by all those whose lives he touched. We will include the words that Jesse chose to live by: “You can like someone for a lifetime, but it takes something special for you to love someone.”
Joe Alton Jackson
September 4, 1948 – July 15, 2007
Joe was born in Robeson County, NC, youngest of six children. He finished high school in Randleman, NC in 1967. I met him at an end of school year picnic in May 1967 and started going out with him July 17, 1967. We soon both knew that life together was a plan. I was 17 and he was 18. He joined the US Army in January 1968 and spent a year in Thailand. We married February 1, 1970, went to Ft. Benning, GA for a year, moved to Greensboro, NC, lived in basement apartments and rental houses for two years, worked at Sears while he attended Guilford Technical Institute for a degree in accounting and graduated from Guilford College in 1975. Along the way we had two daughters, very special to us both. He worked with the IRS for two years before he took a job in Teheran, Iran as an accountant for an airline based out of Oklahoma for eight months. He opened his own CPA firm in February 1979, remained in the business for twenty years, worked with many clients learning, ending up with mail contracting for the post office. We went to Lake Tillery, spent a lot of summer weekends boating and playing in the water. Big parties of people and sunburns were a way of life. Joe’s greatest enjoyment in life was food, and much of the time he manned two grills on the deck, cooking ribs or burgers and hot dogs. He started a trucking company in 2002 as a mail contractor, and ended up retiring in December 2006 after years of negotiations and deals with the public. The children grew up and away, yet very close. Over these years we traveled and vacationed, enjoyed family gatherings, weathered many trials of life, and experienced so much together. Joe enjoyed helping people with their businesses, working with them to save taxes. He was the best negotiator I ever saw when he was buying, selling, brokering or contracting deals for a client. He was very observant and considerate of human nature, treating each and every person with respect, loyal to their confidences, and he didn’t miss an opportunity to laugh and enjoy living. We rode a Honda Gold Wing to Bike Week in Sturgis, SD in August 2001. We rode the Outer Banks, the Shenandoah Valley, the Blue Ridge Parkway and even biked to Key West one summer with some friends. Joe and I loved riding that Gold Wing together, gathering memories, taking pictures, and laughing with our riding buddies. We were blessed with family and friends and wonderful memories. Joe inherited heart disease and suffered a stroke in 1997, overcame that, and started walking and listening to audio books. He loved the Caribbean Islands, ATV’s, and the mountain trails. He loved sports and went to games from North Carolina to Texas and loved his life. We had weekly card games and meals with special friends we met in 1980 and managed to live close together for 27 years. He owned a cable company for ten years. We vacationed with friends in St. Martin and Aruba several times over the years and even attended a New Year’s party in New York City. He had a favorite pet Shih-Tzu named Budd that he teased and loved, in spite of his protests that a dog is a dog. It broke his heart when Budd left us in 2006. We lost the other Shih-Tzu, Koko, in July 2007. This was just days before another stroke took Joe away from me, from his girls, from his family and friends. The love of my life was taken away with the angels for a place of rest and health that only God could provide. Joe was such a caring and giving person to the very end. He was an organ donor, and now there are four people living life because of his kidneys, his liver and his left eye. Somewhere someone has his beautiful brown eye, and I hope that this person sees life with the same wit and humor that Joe possessed. My greatest wish is that this person enjoy life and everyone who shares life with them. Joe was blessed in many ways, but what will be missed most by “his women” is the huge place he held in our lives, our hearts. If Joe could have had time for a regret at all about his life, I imagine it would have been the timing of his passing because I know how much we loved each other. No one missed that detail with the two of us. I experienced the true meaning of love with that man and will miss him dearly. Joe clearly gave more than he took. Words are not enough to describe the blessing of Joe Jackson in the lives of me or our daughters.
Praveen Jariwala
February 6, 1923 – January 18, 2007
In October 1980 my husband Praveen and I sold our home in the USA and took our 10-year-old daughter Maya to live in Bombay, India (now Mumbai) where Praveen spent his early years before coming to the University of California at Berkeley at age 24 to study engineering and become a US citizen. This was our small family’s chance to experience India in a way that even Praveen had not done as a child.
After two months in the dramatic chaos of crowded Bombay, living with relatives, Praveen decided to move us to a quiet village, Hill Station, so that Maya could go to school breathing clean air. Praveen was extremely proud of our uncomplaining adjustment to a vastly different culture.
Praveen had been an activist in the Gandhi non-violent movement as a young man. When he was asked to teach mathematics in the school Maya attended, that spirit of commitment was still there. His students loved him. During the eight years of our stay, he was a dedicated teacher. Being in India at the time of his mother’s death was very important for him as the oldest son.
Donation of his eyes is beautifully appropriate for we feel he was gifted with insight and foresight in his life choices. By living in India, our lives were enriched. We became part of the culture of the village people who patiently welcomed us with open hearts.
David W. Jarrett
December 22, 1944 – September 25, 2007
It's so hard to put into words what this one incredible man had meant to so many people. He was a truly amazing husband, father, grandfather, son, brother, and friend. A loving, caring and giving man who was loved and respected by so many. He loved his family above all else. The members of his immediate family are all neighbors, so we spent a lot of time together. It made him happy to be able to see his children and grandchildren every day and be involved in each of our lives. He’d often say "I'm a very lucky man" and was proud of each and every one of us, making sure we all felt love on a daily basis.
He loved being with his wife of 44 years; she was his world, and he was hers. He loved to fish with his grandchildren, and making beautiful things for them in his woodshop. In 1979 he started Worldwide Hydraulics, Inc., a hydraulic repair shop which works primarily on Navy ships, and he loved his work which took him all over the world. He especially enjoyed working with his son for the last 27 years and his oldest grandson for the last five. He loved watching movies and held frequent movie nights for his grandchildren. He loved Christmas and would make sure his light displays were always the biggest and brightest; he just loved life.
During his fight with colon cancer he remained positive and upbeat; he never let it get him down. He didn't feel sorry for himself, but instead he made the best of a bad situation and always had a smile on his face. He cared more about the people he loved and how we dealt with his cancer than about himself and what he was feeling. That was the type of man he was; he put his family first. As long as he knew his wife, children, and grandchildren were happy and healthy, that's all that mattered to him.
He would have been happy to know that he was able to give the gift of sight to someone else. He once told me during a conversation about organ donation, "If you could give someone else the ability to see by donating your eyes, wouldn't you do it?" So when they came to us and asked about eye donation, we knew without a doubt it's what he would have wanted.
Our family is lost without him; he will remain in our hearts forever. He will be cherished, loved, honored and respected by all of us for the rest of our lives. It was our privilege to call him husband, dad, pop, son, brother, and friend.
William “Kalon” Jeffries
November 8, 1956 – December 14, 2007
Kalon (William Mac Jeffries, Jr.) was born at Watts Hospital in Durham on November 8, 1956. By the time he was three years old, he was diagnosed with autism, the neurological developmental disability that affects one’s perception of the world around him and how to relate to it.
For seven years he was a part of the fourth autism treatment group in the world, and the third group in the United States, which met in the Medical School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. There he took piano lessons and began playing by ear and by note. Years later he took part in social skills training workshops at TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic Children and Adults) that meant a great deal to his development.
At age ten, he was diagnosed with brain injury at the Institutes for the Rehabilitation of the Brain Injured in Media, Pennsylvania, and undertook the strenuous Doman-Delacato patterning program for the next two years.
When he was twelve, he began a series of holistic therapies that, over a period of five years, helped him to have much more balance in his life, such that he was able to work.
Kalon was called William in his early years. However, during his teenage years he chose a new name for himself, Kalon, which is a Greek name meaning “beautiful in body and soul.” That was his ideal of what he wanted to be.
He was the first autism client of North Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation, and learned piano tuning at the Morehead School in Raleigh. His teacher there said that he thought Kalon’s training would take two or three years. However, Kalon mastered the art of piano tuning in just nine months. His teacher said it was as if he were reviewing what he already knew.
Twenty years ago he began full-time work as an animal technician in Research Triangle Park, first at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and then at the Environmental Protection Agency. Kalon was physically strong and in twenty years never missed a day of work because of sickness. His supervisor says he was the best employee he ever had. Recently the twenty people in his section voted him Most Valuable Employee.
Kalon lived with his family until he was twenty-eight, when he entered the nation’s first group home for high functioning individuals with autism. He lived in that group home, located in Raleigh, for ten years. There he mastered money management, diet control, and many other meaningful life skills. For two years after that, he was in an independent living home with three of the original residents of his group home. Eight years ago he moved to the townhouse that he proudly bought with money he had earned in August of 2006.
Kalon took great pleasure in listening to classical music, tuning pianos, swimming, snow-skiing, weightlifting, running, driving his car, and working on his computers. He had three computers and spent many happy hours running his train simulator, cruise ship simulator, and flight simulator.
Kalon played the piano, flute, violin, and soprano and alto recorders. He spent many hours composing sonatas, writing stories on his computer and illustrating them, and watching one of his many videos or CD’s. He enjoyed airplane books, could tell anyone what companies made which engines for the various planes, and could identify a plane by how it sounded when flying.
It was Kalon’s greatest desire to grow out of autism. He had matured more and more as each year passed, managed his bank account, paid his bills on time, and did his own income tax. He was extremely thrifty, being careful to have enough money in his bank account to pay for whatever he spent.
He loved the people at Longview United Methodist Church, where his membership was, and especially the Longview member who looked in on him and his housemate twice a week. Two months ago, one Sunday morning the organist was unexpectedly away, and Kalon played the piano for the service.
Each morning when he went to work, he would park his car a quarter mile away, in the farthest point of the parking lot from the building, and sprint up to the door for exercise. On the freezing cold morning of Thursday, December 6, as Kalon went through the door of the building, he stumbled and collapsed, suffering cardiac arrest. He was revived twice on the way to Duke Medical Center and again after he reached the emergency room, but never again regained consciousness. Kalon was pronounced dead at 7:05 on Friday evening, December 14.
He is survived by his parents, Jo Anne and Bill Jeffries of Durham; brothers, Dr. Thomas L. Jeffries and wife, Glenda, and the Reverend Jonathan David Jeffries and wife, Heather of Raleigh; sister, Theresa Anne Jeffries Lynch and husband, Danny of Hollister; nieces, Rebecca Jeffries, Daniella and Elizabeth Lynch, Sarah Catherine Jeffries and Michelle Adcock; nephews, Lee Jeffries, David Jeffries, Craig Adcock, and Scott and Justin Adcock; aunts, Carolyn Wollaston and husband, Gene of Naperville, Illinois; Clara Harvey and husband, Jack of Wilmington, Delaware; and Betty Baer of Emmitsberg, Maryland.
Fred Plummer Johnson, Jr.
September 16, 1943 – June 10, 2007
Fred was a loving husband, father, brother, uncle and friend to many. His death has left a huge void in the lives of those who knew him and loved him.
Fred served as a deacon and elder in Antioch Presbyterian Church. He was a retired volunteer fireman with Stonewall Fire Department. He worked as Manager of McKenzie Supply Company for more than 30 years.
Family was very important to Fred. He was very close to his brother, Eddie, and sister, Tish. He and his wife, Nancy, were married for 38 years. He dearly loved his son, Steven, and his daughter, Mollie. He was so proud of their accomplishments.
He loved being outdoors – either on his John Deere tractor or lawnmower. That was his idea of recreation and relaxation. He enjoyed the time he was able to help his son with his landscaping business. Fred was not a traveler. If at all possible, he wanted to be home in time to sleep in his own bed. Christmas was his favorite holiday. Picking out the tree was always something he enjoyed doing. Artificial trees were never an option. Even though he claimed he did not like to shop, he always looked forward to his annual Christmas shopping trip with his daughter.
We miss him so much, but we give thanks to God for the years we had together. We will always carry those precious memories in our hearts.
Catherine Jolley
I would have never imagined that I would have married my best friend and the love of my life all at the same time. My wife Catherine taught me what love was supposed to be, and she made sure that she showed me that love every day that we lived. I love her with all of my heart, and she was absolutely the most wonderful wife that a man could hope for, and she held my heart in her hands. God blessed both of us with each other, and we always said that, in the short time we were together, we had lived a lifetime of love. I can truly say that we were right. Even though my heart aches daily for her, I know that she is with her Heavenly Father and that I will see her again one day soon. I love you, baby.
Forever,
Trent
Catherine was 24 years old, full of life and carrying out her passion of helping others through her job as an EMT. She loved life and learned the art of giving and receiving forgiveness – a lesson we all could learn from. Family was important to her and so was her God. She had come into her own in life and out of the shadows of others. She once told me she was just “Cat” and she found her niche with Trent in Hickory. She had a ready smile for everyone and loved practical jokes. She thought Duke ruled while Carolina Blue flew at her mom’s house – an on-going battle! She will always be loved and remembered, especially the day when God had to choose just one and it was her He chose.
Your Mother
My Baby Girl, Catherine. Only God knows why He took you so young. When you went to be with the Lord, you took a part of me with you. I would gladly have taken your place, but God must have needed another angel, so He took you.
The pain in my heart is indescribable. I love you and miss you so much! Until God calls me home to heaven, I will just have to trust in Him and try to be the best Christian I can possibly be. Life here on this earth is short, so I know it won’t be long before I see you and your sister Angie again.
I thank God that because of you those who were blind can now see.
Until then,
Your Daddy
Katie Elizabeth Jones
Miss Katie Elizabeth Jones will be remembered! Remembered by those she loved and those who loved her.
Katie loved people and life. She exhibited those admirable traits by many contributions to her church, family, neighbors, friends, strangers (she never met one) and animals. Her regular attendance at Providence United Methodist Church saw her active in many programs especially youth activities where she made her greatest contributions.
Katie’s family adored her bubbly spirit. She was a cherished daughter, granddaughter, sister and niece. She was athletic, artistic, and mechanically inclined. Stories she wrote were very animated and interesting. You could see her joy as she played on the volleyball and basketball courts. She was interested in what made things go and how to fix them.
Most of all, Katie was a very giving young woman. She wanted to give every way and everything she could. Her friends saw this and signed donor cards with her (at her encouragement) upon receiving their driver’s license. Katie has given so much to others. Now we give her this tribute.
Kenneth Jones
THROUGH THE EYES OF MY FATHER
Through the eyes of my Father
sight is given to one
who may never again
have seen God’s rising sun.
Through the eyes of my Father
the stars are aglow
to someone who thought
they never would know.
That God’s giving spirit
is a part of each soul
through the eyes of my Father
sight you now behold.
Linda Murphy 2007
Harvey Jordan
Harvey Jordan was a very kind and loving man. He loved God and his family and friends. He and his wife Brenda were very close and loved their life together. He always wanted to help people if he could, so I hope his eyes were a blessing to someone.
