Judith Ann Jones

Judith Ann Campbell Jones How do you summarize someone in a paragraph How do you express the feelings of loss when they're forevermore absent from your life How can one describe the essence of the most powerful influence one has ever enjoyed There's not a chance that that can ever even be remotely successful. Who was Judith Ann Campbell Jones Superwoman pales in comparison! She was my mother and where it came to her sons, she believed that she could back-down a rhinoceros! 5'2" and about 130 lb.s of unyielding iron will. She believed in my Father and heaven, and when he said "all things are possible through me." she took that literally! She never believed that there was anything that she couldn't accomplish once she set her mind to it...And she wouldn't accept any less from her sons. A can-do attitude is pale description where it comes to my mother! She was a widow, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a leader, an example, a mentor, a source of wisdom, a faithful servant of the Lord, and a never ending supply of love! But you'd better be prepared for the truth! Especially were it, that you were in the wrong, or following the wrong path, or just not living up to your potential! You didn't want to be slacking off! First of all, you'd find yourself so far behind it'd take you a couple of days just to catch up! She never stopped! She worked up until the day she died. She had a home office for Johnny's Equipment in Perryton, and regardless of how she was feeling, she just would NOT stay out of that office! Several years ago, she had rotator cuff surgery. The operation went well and the doctors told her to expect 6-8 weeks of therapy in recovery from the procedure. She was at her desk in three days! Of course most of the first week she worked with the one functional hand and with limited movement of her entire other arm, and promptly began the therapy. It turned out that the criteria for the completion of the therapy was that you had to be able to raise your arm above your head...She was out of therapy in 14 days! Everyone was amazed! Especially all the men in therapy who were crying about how much pain it caused them to move their shoulders! In late January she announced that she needed a ride to the hospital on February 7th for surgery on the bladder, and internal organs to restore support for the tissues. It was like she was announcing that she would attend a recital or something! She had no doubt that she would recover in no time, and expressed little if any concern. These were supposed to be "quality of life" surgeries which would make her more comfortable in her remaining years. She spent 8 hours on the table while the doctors were working to accomplish the goals of these procedures, they also removed a substantial amount of scar tissue which resulted from a near-death medical event from 34 years ago. She was recovering remarkably well the doctors said, and after about 5 weeks of post-operative care with weekly visits to the surgeons, she was informed that she could wait two weeks before the next visit. She didn't make the two weeks! She suffered a sudden drop in hemoglobin and had to be rushed to the ER. No definitive diagnosis about why her hemoglobin suddenly dropped was determined, and her medications were indicated as being suspected in a drug interaction event between a blood thinner and a pain medication. 4 doctors (or more) 4 opinions (or more) and no consensus about cause or treatment. Each doctor prescribed a new or differing medication, or dosage changes, or period of interval between dosages of one medication vs. another. It was all very conflicting, confusing, and useless. In the late seventies and early 80s she worked with her husband Melburn "Buck" Jones in road construction. Many of the roads they built are still in use and in good repair today. They built roads in many municipalities including Perryton, Dumas, Dalhart mainly for a company named Lewis Construction, but there were also others... Buck's final employer was Bunger construction. I say that to tell you this little story... At some point along the way, Buck and Judy went to work for a construction company, it's not important which, but at the time, the all male crew just didn't appreciate having a woman involved in the daily duties of the construction work. I have been told that the foreman decided that it might be fun to embarrass her, and that maybe that might make her want to quit. So he assigned her to operate a piece of equipment which every employee on the job was challenged by due to it's age and reluctance to go where it was pointed! It's steering was simply a stick! No steering wheel at all, and most of the most experienced operators were not able to reliably control it's direction. Even though new to this crew, it seems that Buck knew the maintenance mechanic or was at least well enough acquainted with him, that he was able to convince the man to look at the machine's steering. It seems that there was a problem with the linkage and the mechanic was able to correct it, even though the crew had been operating it in the condition it was in for several years! At any rate, with the steering now remarkably responsive, Judy astonished the entire crew including the foreman by operating the machine with precision and accomplishing the task so quickly that she had to be assigned to a different area to work! No one expected her to come anywhere close to finishing half of the assigned task that day, and she'd completed the assignment before lunchtime! In addition, she induced a new attitude in that entire crew! Most of her time working in construction, she was setting grade and running stakes for her husband Buck. I promise, you don't understand! That is probably the toughest job in road construction, and she kept it for years because the young men who hired onto the crews could NOT get it right, nor keep up with the workflow! To run stakes you HAVE TO RUN! You have to keep ahead of the motor grader and instruct him about how much ground to cut to get down to the designed grade. You have to run all day, you keep ahead of the motor grader, and you have to know how to read the stake, signal the operator, and make sure the cut is accurate. If you cut too deep, you drag out the stake, and then you have to reset it, and race to the next one in time to signal for the cut at that location! When you get it wrong, the job stinks, the road is poorly constructed, and fails much too early, and you can see that kind of quality all around us today! Road quality starts with the laborer who is running the stakes! She worked for Buck running stakes for close to a decade! I was invited to work with them one summer. I was tasked with running stakes. I didn't last the DAY!!! They built roads all over the Texas Panhandle. Residential streets, county roads, portions of I-27 between Lubbock and Happy, portions of 287 between Clarendon and Vernon, air strips, feed lots, parking lots were all constructed by this duo! Much of that work persists in good repair to this day! That gets you to 1990! Buck died in 1989. Now Judy had to find a job! A few weeks after Buck died, Mom had her trailer moved just down the street from mine. She looked for a job for several weeks with no success after which time she decided to contact a friend, and former employee of Buck's who in the intervening years had purchased the property in Perryton on which Lewis Construction had built their business facility. He opened Johnny's Equipment and repair and as a start-up business he was working hard to succeed. He needed office help and Judy fit the bill! She helped him to grow the business and today it, and he enjoy a substantial net worth! Johnny had some challenges, and I am sure if you asked him, there was many a day when he wondered who worked for whom! As I said before, Judy suffered no fools, no lay-abouts and no laziness. She lived and worked on the premisis of Johnny's Equipment somewhere around the better half of a decade! That meant that if Johnny happened to want to slack off, or entertain any of his challenges he had Judy to contend with! She refused to allow work to languish, jobs had to make deadlines! The sound of a whip cracking may have been heard! Johnny knows! She was loving, appreciative and DEMANDING! The business grew as they each exercised their areas of expertise! She made sure Johnny had a retirement plan, that the mortgage payments were made, that all accounts were kept current and that the business became known for charitable contributions to worthy causes and civic involvement in and around Perryton. Sometimes without concent! She involved herself with marketing, you'll probably find Johnny's Equipment pens, calendars, appointment planners and hand held calculators in businesses all over the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle! They were in gift bags at golf tournaments, and wherever else she thought they might do some good in promoting the business. She did Johnny's books and mine too when I opened my business in 1996! It was at that time that she left the loft apartment in Perryton and came back to Amarillo, but she still made weekly trips to Perryton to handle necessities, transfer supplies and take care of the business. She was still making trips, though less frequently up until 2017. I don't know if she made more than two or three this year. In September of 1996 the city of Amarillo decided to build an overpass over the railroad tracks on Amarillo BLVD just East of Grand Street. I remember when it happened because it literally blocked off all access to my new business just months after opening! The only access involved a detour of about 9 blocks around a circuitous side road route that virtually no one knew! Judy never allowed me to become discouraged, and bolstered the survival of my business out of her own pocket when necessary! I was loathe to accept money from her in that way but she persisted in making whatever sacrifices necessary to assist me and my business. Her Perryton office was housed in the front office of my building at the time, and she was aware of every business transaction and procedure of my business and the majority of Johnny's! She helped keep me afloat when she rented the parts warehouse area of my business to one of her oldest friends to store furniture for his business in the Tee-Anchor Flea Market! She never stopped believing in me and my business, but after the towers fell in 2001 and the economy stopped like someone flipped off a light switch, I finally had to put an end to her contributions to my business by telling her that if my business could not support itself, that it was time to close it! I wouldn't take anymore money from her to perpetuate it! I used all of my IRA to start that business and keep it afloat and she knew it! She didn't want me to think of myself as a failure! Well... That business was started with no loans in a facility that had housed a nationally known branded semi-truck dealership. It was gigantic and far larger than I needed, but there were no other shops to rent in Amarillo at the time, and that facility had sat empty for almost ten years. I rented it for the price of a far smaller building for the first two years, but expenses on a facility that larger were exorbitant! The additional overhead stunted my business at the start, and overpass construction was a knife to the guts! Even so I still lasted more than 5 years and when I closed I was not forced into banruptcy due to debt because there was virtually no debt other than the building rent, associated with the business. I never made so little money in my adult life! No debt because of my mother, and her endless support! She took in my brother Jimmy at his end of life as his health failed, but he had substance abuse issues and she couldn't keep living together with him. She asked me to help her find a house, and she moved into it, giving my brother her mobile home! She still supported, cared for and tended to his needs, she just didn't live with him! This looks like a book, but it doesn't scratch the surface of the wonder that was my mother Judy Jones! Judith Ann Campbell Jones Widow of Melburn "Buck" Jones Ex-wife of Joseph C. Giesler Mother of 4 sons John Edward Joseph Aurthur James Patrick Jefferey Robert Grandmother of Lana Giesler, Jordin Giesler, Charlie Giesler, Joseph B Giesler Great-grandmother of Jakobi Navarro-Giesler Preceded in death by Buck and James Patrick and of course her parents of Sherman, TX. and her brother Aurther Campbell of Dallas, and sister Lorelle Sloan of Sherman, TX succeeded by all others Graduate of Sherman High School 1955 Bearcats Sherman, Texas Faithful Employee of Johnny's Equipment and Repair about 28 years. Visitation Will Be at Rector Funeral Home Osage Chapel 2800 South Osage, Amarillo, Texas 79103 Monday, May 14, 2018 SERVICES Funeral Service Tuesday, May 15, 2018 2:00 PM Rector Funeral Home 2800 South Osage Amarillo, Texas 79103 Visitation Will Be at Rector Funeral Home Osage Chapel 2800 South Osage, Amarillo, Texas 79103 Monday, May 14, 2018