Dortha Jean Jay was a Great Depression baby, born on August 31, 1931, in Cayuga, Anderson County, Texas, the sixth child of Clifford Robert Jay and his wife Minnie Lois Bownds. The Jay family had moved from Central to East Texas because Clifford had found work in the oil fields as a roughneck. It was hard to make ends meet and in later years Dortha mentioned that they ate a lot of sauerkraut during that time, not because they were German, but because it didn’t cost much.  In addition to financial hardship, this young family had already suffered the tragedy of losing their second child, Ivelle, as the result of a doctor’s admitted misdiagnosis.

When Dortha Jean was about six, the family moved back to Lexington, Lee County, Texas, where her Bownds grandparents had a place out in the country. She and her siblings and parents lived in a sharecropper’s shack on her grandparents’ property. That house was frigid in the winter and stifling in the summer. The family picked cotton while covered up in long sleeves and sunbonnets to earn a few extra dollars during those lean years. Dortha remembered the sight of her mother, suffering from severe heat rash, canning vegetables from the garden, in the overheated August kitchen. They were poor; the girls had corn shuck dolls for their “babies.” Mother Minnie made the girls’ dresses from leftover flour sacks, which were printed with colorful designs. Dortha had a pet kitten, and a pet chicken that followed her everywhere. Times were hard.

Possibly brought on by the stress of money worries, the loss of one child and a newborn to care for, in about 1934, her mother suffered what was called then a “nervous breakdown.” Her mother thankfully recovered. The family was religious and belonged to the Faith Temple Church, a non-denominational, bible-based religion, akin to the Pentecostal or Church of God. According to the teachings of this church, Dortha Jean and her sisters were not allowed to dance, use makeup or wear pants. That may have been hard for the Jay girls to accept as teenagers in that era of lipstick wearing, jitterbugging, and rolled up jeans. Their parents were strict but loving.

As she got older, it became obvious that Dortha Jean was good at sports--especially baseball, so much so that in school, she was the only girl allowed to play on the boys’ team. (She continued to play ball with her children years later. This kind of playful activity was not typical of the mothers of that day. Of course, she was younger than a lot of moms too; she was still in her twenties when her oldest child was ten). In school, she began to call herself by her middle name, “Jean”, as she was not fond of “Dortha”. Jean played in the Lexington junior high band--the bass drum. Although she could sing, she really wasn’t musical.  Why the base drum? She said no one else would play it. Jean was only 5’2” on a good day. It was probably a sight to see her boom-boom-booming away on that big bass drum during football games.

One of the reasons that her family never did have much money, Jean admitted, was because her father was “not a good provider.” Her father, Clifford, tried hard, working at farming for others, but he just was not successful like other men in their small community.  The family didn’t own any land or a house until his wife Minnie’s parents died and left her a sum that was sufficient to buy some property and build a modest house. Clifford’s parents had nothing to leave him. He ended up doing odd jobs and sharpening tools for a living and became a lay pastor, preaching the gospel at his church and traveling to other churches. He was involved with starting the City of Refuge near Lexington. This was a housing project for homeless and alcoholic men. It later became a home for unwed mothers.  Perhaps earning money was not very important to him? He may have been more concerned about spiritual welfare than an earthly one.

Consequently, Jean quit school before she graduated to get a job and help to add to the family income. She waitressed in Lexington, at a local café, for a while. Later, she trained as a nurse’s aide at Stromberg’s hospital in Taylor, Texas, and she also worked at the Austin State school, helping to care for Downs syndrome patients.

 It was in 1948, and it was in Stromberg’s hospital, in Taylor, Williamson County, Texas that she met her future husband. Mrs. Ella Thaler, a patient, had taken a liking to Jean, and wanted to introduce her to her brother-in-law, Martin, but when Jean found out that he was thirty-five, she told Ella that he was way too old. (Jean was only seventeen at the time, although she had been out in the workforce since she was fourteen). One day Martin came to visit his sister-in-law, and Jean caught a glimpse of him as she passed by Ella’s room. She was so immediately smitten that later she got his phone number from Ella and called him. She said of Martin that “He was the most handsome man I had ever seen.” Suddenly, age didn’t matter. They celebrated the next fifty years of “happily ever after”, before his death in 1999.

Jean and Martin moved to San Antonio after they married, when Martin took a civil service position at Kelly Air Force Base. Jean was a stay-at-home mother during the time their two children were young. She was able to be a room mother and bake cookies and cupcakes for their classes and participate in the Parent Teachers Association. She made wonderful homemade dinners like Swiss steak, and packed nutritious lunches for Martin and the children. She was famous for her apple pies-Granny Smith apples were best to use, and her secret ingredient was lemon juice as a counterpoint to the sweetness. Rolled in cinnamon and sugar, Snickerdoodles were her favorite cookies to bake. She had a lot of creativity: she made professional quality clothes for her family on her home sewing machine; she taught herself to upholster furniture; she had a natural talent for drawing and graduated from a correspondence school art course. When her children got older, she began to work in retail jobs to help with family expenses. She was employed at Winn’s and Brunner’s stores in San Antonio for many years, rose to supervisory positions, and utilized her creativity to design many eye-catching window and endcap displays for special sales. She continued working after her children were in college and married. When she and Martin were both retired, Martin and Jean decided to leave San Antonio behind and move back to the town where they had first met--Taylor, Texas where they found a nice house across the street from Martin’s nephew and wife.

Despite her many accomplishments in life, Jean always regretted not getting her high school diploma, but she felt years later that it was too late to get a GED. When it came time for their daughter to either go to college or not, Martin had the old -fashioned idea that a woman did not need higher education—she would only get married and then have a family and never use the degree, and that having a degree was a waste of money. Jean challenged that viewpoint. “Our daughter may have to support herself and her family someday. How would she do it on a job like mine that pays so little?” He saw the sense of that argument. So, Jean’s daughter graduated college, one of the first of her cousins to do that.

Jean knew only one set of grandparents—her mother’s side--and nothing before them and not much at all about her father’s family. Researching her ancestors revealed some surprises. She was shocked to learn that according to her birth certificate, her original name was not Dortha Jean, but “Goldie.” As Jean always had very dark brown hair, she wondered how she had gotten that name, unless the reference was to the “black gold” of the oil fields in East Texas where she was born? Her name was eventually officially changed  to Dortha Jean. She discovered that her Bownds ancestors were probably Welsh and lived in Maryland in the late 1600s. Her father’s Jay family was probably English and was traceable back to the 1730s in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia--they lived only a few miles from some of George Washington’s relatives. Some of her Jay family were Quakers.

In her widowhood, Jean continued to live in her home in Taylor for twenty-one more years.  She was religious, prompt, dependable, frugal, creative, extremely independent, and very self-reliant; she would always try to repair things herself-even her own plumbing! She continued to mow and trim her yard well into her late 80s. She took great pride in her appearance and always looked attractively dressed for church and special occasions. She was very much an energizer bunny—she just kept going and going.

Sadly, a bad car accident and then a fall slowed her down. She began to have some balance issues and problems comprehending some of the business letters she received. It was decided that she shouldn’t live by herself any longer, and in October of 2020, she moved to Brenham to live with her daughter and son-in-law on their property. She was able to have her own house across the driveway from theirs—an independent but assisted life. Jean spent four and a half years doing yard work, baking cookies, sharing memories, and doing jigsaw puzzles alongside her daughter. They survived Covid together. She was able to visit with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren when they came to see her in Brenham. Her daughter became her personal shopper and she had rides to her doctor and dental appointments, so she didn’t need to drive any more.

Jean fell again and broke her left shoulder in 2021 and then another fall happened and she broke her hip in March of 2025. That was repaired successfully, but a brain scan revealed moderate to severe microvascular ischemic disease, a thickening or filling up of the small vessels of the brain with plaque. There is no cure. She seemed to be making progress in rehab but was able to do increasingly less for herself over this last year. She lost her last sibling in December of 2025. On Saturday, July 18, 2026, Jean died peacefully in her sleep at 94 years; just thirty-three days shy of her 95th birthday. Before her death, she requested that there be no funeral or graveside service. She will be buried in Taylor City Cemetery next to Martin, the “most handsome man she had ever seen.”

Her beautiful spirit will survive in the memories that we all have of her: a son and daughter and their spouses, four grandchildren and their families, and four great grandchildren, extended family and friends-- an inspiring example of a life well-loved and a life well-lived.