My sister Barbara published this photo on Facebook. It hangs in Trinity Church, Houston, in honor of our Aunt Etta Jane's lifelong membership and faithful service to the church. Barbara saw it as part of a 4-church bus tour of churches with beautiful stained glass windows that the Religion and the Arts Council at Christ Church Cathedral (of which she and niece Katie are part of the leadership) put on.
So, Aunt Etta Jane. She was born in Hillsboro, Texas in 1915, where her parents had gone to start a ballast mining company. They moved to Houston within a few years and began to attend Trinity. Etta Jane was a committed Christian and a pillar of that church all her life, as well as the church treasurer for many year & until her death. She was also a good and trusted friend to the rector there, and I was not sure he would make it through her funeral service.
She was a Certified Public Accountant. She lived with her mother always - the oldest of the five children in the family, her work and support during the bad years after their father died made it possible for my father and others to stay in college. She bought his senior boots (a big deal for a young member of the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M).
She was 50 when I was born. I knew her as a successful businesswoman...at a time when there were not so many of them. She was active in P.E.O., Altrusa, and other organizations. This photo is on the Altrusa International website, from the 1962-64 biennium when she was Governor.
I saw her in the hospital about a week before she died. She wasn't able to talk, but she knew me. I was in grad school - young! - I didn't understand how severe her condition was. She was dying of lung cancer. I asked the nurse, blithely, "when can she go home?" The nurse's non-answer told me what I needed to know. I was there with my parents and aunts when she died, also.
May she rise in peace and rest in glory.
