Jean E. Thomas

Jean Eleanor Scoble Thomas of Weslaco, Texas passed away on Friday, May 1, 2015 at the age of 92. Jean was born on March 26, 1923 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to the late Leon Scoble and Mary Kearney Scoble. She graduated from Coughlin High School in Wilkes-Barre in June of 1941. Mother Mary was born in Dublin, Ireland. After her husband Leon died in 1935, she remarried George Miller. Jean married James Richard Thomas on November 13, 1943, her husband of almost 46 years. James preceded her in death in 1989. He was 69 years old and was to retire in four months. She is survived by her son Ronald J. Thomas and her brother in law Arthur L. Thomas of Milford, Connecticut and brother in law Henry Wilson of Ogden, Utah along with many nieces and nephews. Jean had two sisters – Dorothy who was 13 years older and died in 1988, and Annette who was 14 months older and died the same week as Jean on Tuesday April 28. She had one brother Allan who died in 1996 and another brother Willard Scoble , also deceased. Another sister Arline died when she was 4 years old, before Jean was born. Sister Dorothy had two children, Nelson Watkins of Wilkes-Barre and Deidre M Blank of Yardley, Pennsylvania. Sister Annette had one daughter, Arla A. (Tomko) Scalzo of Dallas, Pennsylvania. Jean had two sister in laws – Nicoletta P. Thomas of Milford, Connecticut who passed away on July 14, 2013 at the age of 93 and Diane Thomas Wilson of Ogden, Utah who passed away on April 14, 2012. After Jean graduated from High School she went to Washington DC in 1941 where she lived for 18 months at the YWCA and worked for a coronel at the War Department Headquarters of the Army Air Force as a secretary. During this time she met her husband James (nickname Dick) at a Mormon Church dance. They went to Long Island, NY where James attended radio operator school. During the war years, James was a radio operator and navigator for TWA airlines which was doing cargo flights for the Army to North Africa and other continents. Later he was a radio operator for the Merchant Marine in the Pacific. In 1943, Jean studied at George Washington University in a pre-pharmacy curriculum. Many years later she worked as a pharmacy technician at Knapp Hospital in Weslaco, Texas. After the war Jean and Dick returned to Provo, Utah where he worked on his master’s degree in agriculture research and she took an accounting course in 1946. Dick finished his researched for his master's degree at Fort Detrick, near Frederick, Maryland. Their son Ron was born in Frederick in 1948. Jean and Dick lived in Pullman, Washington where Dad got a Ph.D at Washington State University in June of 1955. His first job after college was in Modesto, California for a private agricultural company. Son Ronald was in nursery school at the time. The company went out of business within a year so Dick applied for work with the federal government and got a job with the USDA doing research at an experiment station in Newell, South Dakota where they lived for three years. They had a house on the station out in the country and son Ron took the school bus into Newel1 for the 1st through 3rd grades. Dad was transferred to Texas in 1959 to work at an experiment station in Weslaco where we lived ever since. Dad and Mom took courses at the University of Arizona in Tucson for one semester when Ron was in the 8th grade. Jean took courses at Pan American College in Edinburg, Texas from 1959 to 1967 majoring in music and elementary education. Jean and Dick visited many National Parks and Monuments often on the way to visiting his parents in Ogden, Utah. They visited many states often on the way to meetings where Dick gave talks on his research. They took a bus tour of several countries in Europe including Holland, Germany, France, and England. After Dad’s death, Jean and son Ron visited England and Scotland on a bus tour, and Ireland and London the next year. Having earned enough airline miles they qualified for a free flight to Hawaii which they took the following year. Later they toured the Canadian Rockies. Jean enjoyed crosswords and she and Ron did a large jigsaw puzzle every Christmas until her eyes got bad. She enjoyed planting flowers in the yard, reading, taking care of dogs and adopted many stray cats over the years. When traveling she had her own camera and took a lot of pictures, often of flowers. She collected cook books – she has many volumes of the Southern Living Cookbook and she made recipe card files. She always kept in touch with friends and relatives through writing letters and had beautiful hand writing. She loved to watch the Dallas Cowboys on TV and was a fan of Fox News. She will be buried in the Ogden City Cemetery in Ogden, Utah next to her husband. Graveside services will be at 11:00 on Saturday May 9, 2015. A viewing will be held on Friday from 6 to 8 at Myers Mortuary in Ogden.