JoAnn loved a life of adventure and she certainly enjoyed many unique experiences in her 67-year marriage to Dean. She was always willing to move, travel, work, and help others. As recently as 2017, JoAnn went with Dean on a major trip to China. She loved that trip! In the last ten years, she also traveled to Quebec City, New England, and other shorter trips around the country. Just a few years ago, she did a snowmobile day trip in Colorado! JoAnn enjoyed these trips despite dealing with terrible, chronic back pain and some health problems. JoAnn was a STRONG woman!
JoAnn Lewis Nixon was born April 28, 1935, in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Her parents, Ruth and Harold Lewis, were Christians and JoAnn was baptized as a teenager. She began dating Dean in high school. He was a basketball star and JoAnn was told she could be the basketball queen, but Dean didn’t want her to be queen because he didn’t want the team captain to kiss her!
She went to work as a secretary at the Muskogee Court House while Dean went to his first year of college at the University of Oklahoma. They married August 24, 1955, and she helped put him through college by working as secretary to the Chief Naval Officer at the Naval Air Technical Training Station in Norman, Oklahoma. Unexpectedly, their daughter, Debbie, appeared on the scene and JoAnn continued to work, be a new mom, and support Dean through graduation.
From that point on, their lives revolved around Dean’s jobs in the petroleum industry and later jobs in the drilling, coal, and minerals industries. Dean said, “JoAnn was always there for me. Always. She was willing to move wherever my jobs took us, including overseas to Venezuela.” They moved 11 times to 10 different cities during the last 67 years. They lived in Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Caracus, Venezuela.
JoAnn was a stay-at-home mother while Debbie and Dean, Jr. were growing up. She was involved in church, their activities, Dean’s duties at work, and as Vice President of the Oklahoma Jaycee’s. When they moved to Birmingham the first time in 1972, Dean was running his own business. JoAnn was his office manager. Later, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, JoAnn got a job with Digital Equipment in Dallas. She was in on the first development of Personal Computers and she became and stayed very computer literate. JoAnn was very technically savvy and could figure out most computer problems. Just last week, she was paying bills online!
JoAnn was known for her classic beauty and stunning blue eyes. Many over the years said she looked like a movie star. However, most importantly, JoAnn had a beautiful and kind spirit. Debbie said one of her memories from their time in Bartlesville (1960–1972) was when one of JoAnn’s church friends told Debbie, “Your mother is the kindest, sweetest person. I have never heard her say a bad word about anyone.” Debbie remembers a neighbor woman getting mad and yelling at the kids playing in the yard. The woman was furious at something. Instead of getting mad at the woman, JoAnn went over to talk to her, calm her down, and diffused the situation. Debbie also remembers her mom reinforcing moral lessons. When Debbie was 5 years old. she picked a flower out of a neighbor’s garden to give to her mom. The neighbor happened to be very proud and protective of her garden. JoAnn thanked Debbie for the gift, but told her she had to take the flower back to the neighbor and apologize for pulling it out of her flower bed. Debbie never forgot that lesson!
JoAnn was very artistic with food, clothing, and home decorating. She is legendary as a cook. Dean’s favorite dishes she made are homemade chicken and dumplings, coconut pie, and blackberry cobbler. JoAnn always put a home-cooked meal on the table for her family until essential tremors stopped her cooking a few years ago. But she could still direct others in the kitchen and teach them how to make the pies, cinnamon rolls, or a meal. She sewed most of her and Debbie’s clothes until the mid-1970s. Most amazingly, she handmade all of the clothes for Debbie’s Barbie dolls. She made them very fashionable! And since then JoAnn dressed herself and her family with classic style. She knew the latest fashion trends and adapted them. She lived in many different types of dwellings over the years—everything from apartments to houses. Her homes always looked like a professional interior designer had done them, but JoAnn did all of the decorating herself. But she never bragged or fussed about these skills. JoAnn was humble and didn’t draw attention to herself.
JoAnn and Dean have three grandchildren and two great-grandsons. Jason, their grandson, said, “She was everything a boy could have hoped for in a grandmother…warm, patient, kind, loving, and always spoiled us with wonderful homemade food. In spite of not hearing too well, she was a great conversationalist. Mama-Jo was always interested in what was going on in our lives, and loved talking with us.”
Granddaughter Stephanie remembers Mama-Jo as “beautiful, stylish, creative, and kind…with a quick wit that could sneak up on you and make you laugh when you least expected it. Her hosting and cooking skills were legendary, and some of my most-cherished moments were spent in the kitchen learning from her. Even though she could be exacting as ‘head chef,’ she was always patient and gentle whenever I made a mess or snuck a spoonful of cookie batter. That was true outside of the kitchen, too…no matter where we were in life, she always made us feel right at home. She lived and loved well, and she is well-loved and dearly missed.”
Dean Jr., JoAnn’s son, said: “When I think of the most precious mom, lady, wife, but most important of all, person who always demonstrated love, caring, passion, elegance, and wisdom, there is a quote from the 1998 movie ‘Meet Joe Black’ that fits her love perfectly. Multiply it by infinity, and take it to the depth of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I’m talking about.”
JoAnn’s most important roles as wife, mother, grandmother, and friend will never be forgotten. She fulfilled those roles well. She was the Proverbs 31 woman:
"A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life…
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate."
You would probably be surprised at the many different challenges JoAnn had in her lifetime. She was strong in so many ways. When they lived in Venezuela, Dean had some scary interactions with political factions in Colombia. JoAnn was separated from him when one group took him to their camp in the jungle. She didn’t know if he would be returned. She made it through the night in her hotel room, and Dean was returned a day later. JoAnn was strong during those days living in Venezuela. She had to do laundry on a washboard, learn the language, and learn how to cook different foods with less supplies. She was amazing!
JoAnn’s favorite vacations were a 1970s trip through Arizona to the Grand Canyon, and the 2017 trip through China. That was the last time she and Dean were able to dance. They were excellent dance partners, especially doing the Jitterbug! On the trip to China, their hosts took them to a nightclub. People were surprised when they got out on the dance floor and did a modified Jitterbug (the family has video proof!). JoAnn’s next adventure is the greatest and we know she is dancing in heaven with the angels. She isn’t in pain, she can hear perfectly, and she doesn’t have a tremor. She is young again, laughing, and dancing—and after many years of serving as the consummate homemaker for so many of us here on earth—she is now resting in her eternal home.
*All obituaries are submitted by family and friends of the deceased.
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