Janida Jones Murphree, age 90, died at 3:57 am on Sunday, October 25, in
her daughter’s home in Middlebury, Vt. She died peacefully, surrounded
by family, love, and prayer, after a long decline from Alzheimer’s.
Janida
was born August 6, 1930 to Robert Ezekiel and Ima Gaye Jones of Duncan,
Okla. Her mother’s family were early pioneers in Stephens County,
“crossing the Red River from Texas with their cattle” (as her mother put
it) when Oklahoma was still Indian Territory and Stephens County part
of the Chickasaw Nation. When Janida was born her father owned and ran
the Jones Brothers Dairy, which he was later forced to sell during the
Great Depression; he then picked up a paint brush and traveled the
country taking every job he could find, while Ima lived at and ran a
National Youth Administration program for young women.
With both
parents working, Janida and older sister Julia Ann lived much of the
Depression with their grandparents, Sid and Ida Jones. Among Janida’s
fondest lifelong memories were driving cows with “Papa Sid” from the
family’s land south of Duncan to the clear water and green grass of
“Weed Holler” and riding her cow pony Skipper.
Janida attended
public school in Duncan, but graduated from Horace Mann High School in
Ada in 1948. Her first year of college she attended Baylor University in
Waco, Texas, where she met future husband Bobby Warren Murphree (born
in Muleshoe, Texas, but whose family moved to California in the 1940s).
She spent two years at the University of Oklahoma, and, following Bob,
finished her undergraduate studies at Long Beach State College (now Long
Beach State University), with a BA in elementary education and minor in
physical education in July 1952.
On December 22, 1951, Janida
and Bobby were married in Duncan’s First Baptist Church, where Janida
grew up and where her parents were life-long members. Janida and Bobby
lived most of their married life in and around Berkeley, Calif., where
Bobby prepared for a career in the ministry, obtaining both a bachelor’s
in divinity and master’s in theology degrees from Golden Gate Baptist
Theological Seminary and a master’s in history from the University of
California, Berkeley. Their five children — Robert, Sidney, Meigan,
Gaen, and Jacob — were all born in the Berkeley/Oakland area between
1952 and 1961.
Tragedy struck July 2, 1961, when Bobby drowned in
the Berkeley YMCA pool, and Janida brought her family of five — the
youngest five months, the oldest eight years — back to Duncan, where she
had the support of family. A year after Bobby’s death, she began taking
classes at Oklahoma College for Women in Chickasha (now University of
Science and Arts of Oklahoma). At OCW she discovered her life’s work:
working with children as a speech language pathologist in public
schools.
In 1965, soon after receiving her SPL certificate from
OCW, Janida landed her first job and moved her family to Medicine Lodge,
Kan. In 1967 they moved again, this time to Hays, Kan., where Janida
furthered her expertise and education with a master's in speech language
pathology from the then–Fort Hays State College. From 1968 to 1972, she
ran one of western Kansas’s first public school–based programs for
hearing-impaired children out of a classroom at Hays' Lincoln Elementary
School invitingly filled with toys, games and colorful teaching
materials. She taught with love, hugs, and patience — and a belief that
every child should have a voice.
Over her 30-year-plus career,
Janida worked at schools in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. She loved
her work and took pride in supporting her family as a single mom, while
helping kids access speech and language so they could live happier
lives. She was truly a kid whisperer.
After her retirement,
Janida lived for a time in Norman, Okla., then relocated to Colorado
Springs, Colo., which she loved for its proximity to the Rocky
Mountains. In Colorado Springs, she owned and managed two apartment
buildings and later took up oil painting, taking classes and painting
hundreds of pictures of flowers, trees, birds, frogs, barns, fields and
pastures — and of course, her beloved long-horn cows. Janida's daughter
Meigan, who had died in 1998 of a heroin overdose, was known to many in
the Springs area as a poet and rock 'n' roll musician. Janida provided a
second home, a place of loving acceptance, to many of her late
daughter's friends. In 2000, she bought a little house near Sondermann
Park, where she loved to walk in nature.
Janida’s children
remember her gratefully for her grit and determination in the face of
hardship; for teaching them the value of work; for instilling a love of
music, books, and learning; for taking them camping in beautiful places
like Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Tetons; for letting them
use their own minds and gain independence; and for always letting them
know how much she loved them.
Janida is survived by sons Robert,
of Norman, Okla.; Sidney, of Louisville, Ky.; and Jacob, of Omaha, Neb.;
by daughter Gaen, of Middlebury, Vt.; by grandchildren Matthew, Colin,
and John Murphree; Ian, Luke, and Jessica Murphree; and Meigan and Chloe
Clark; and by step-great-grand-daughter Leia Beth Johnson. She is also
survived by nieces Stephanie Sidney, of Gardner, Mass., and Sabrina
Sanders, of Lompoc, Calif. Janida’s daughter Meigan, then of Lawton,
Okla., died in 1998. Her niece Sharon Gayle Short Athey died in 2002.
Her sister Julee Short (Julia Ann Jones), of Norman, Okla., died in
2010.
Janida's ashes will be interred next to her husband's later in 2021 at the municipal cemetery in Duncan, Okla.