Joan Grimes

In Remembrance: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Joan Grimes, 87, a registered nurse, passed away Thursday, March 16, 2017 in Odessa.
Service: 2 p.m. Monday, March 20, 2017 at Wiley Funeral Home in Granbury. Interment: Acton Cemetery. Memorials: American Cancer Society.

Carolyn Joan Bole Grimes was born in Hillsboro, Texas and lived in several different towns in Texas and Kansas, before her oil pipeline engineer father was stationed in Cresson, near Granbury, in 1942. She graduated from Granbury High School in 1947, and was a R.N. graduate of St. Joseph’s nursing school in Ft. Worth. Her very first job was as THE surgical/OB nurse for the Weatherford Hospital in the early 1950’s. It was in Weatherford that she met her husband and love of her life, Don Grimes.

During her long life, Joan Grimes was many things to many people – a beloved daughter, sister, wife, mother, widow, trusted employee and friend. To most of her family she was known as “Sister”, but for almost thirty years – to generations of school children, parents and citizens in the little town of Shallowater, Texas, she was simply “Nurse Grimes” – a source of healing, comfort, strength and love. Joan moved to Shallowater in the 1960’s as a young widow with two small children to support. Having lost her beloved husband Don to cancer at age 34, she moved there to be close to her parents, Roy and Melle Bole, and her sister, Jeanine Ray and her family. Thankful to have a profession, she re-entered the nursing world and worked variously as an industrial nurse for the Hancock Corp. and as Supervisor of Pediatric Nursing at Lubbock Methodist Hospital for a few years. But the hours were long, and she was away from her children, Don L. and Carol, far more than she liked. So, when the opportunity happened, she ignored the pay cut, and took the job as Shallowater’s School Nurse.

Little did she know she was about to become THE medical practitioner for a community. For the next twenty-odd years she not only took care of the children who attended the schools, she was nurse on call to a community. She went to all the athletic events to render aide and provide transport to the hospital in the city if someone got hurt, she gave shots and checked blood pressure and looked in regularly on the elderly shut-ins in town. She delivered babies at the 7-Eleven, and provided live-saving CPR to heart attack victims till the ambulance arrived. She was a caring neighbor and faithful friend. She did all that, and still attended all her children’s ballgames, concerts, and took them to Sunday School and church, and gave them a home filled with love. She played board games and cards with them, and her lady friends, and helped with homework. Along with her sister’s family she traveled all over the U.S. each summer on fun-filled family vacations.

She was fun to be with, and once the kids were grown and married, and she at last retired, she spent lots of joyful years right here- back in Granbury, where she played golf and bridge with her sister and niece, and even traveled to far away places like Alaska, and England, and Europe. Finally, in her later years she moved to Midland to be close to her daughter Carol, where she continued to enjoy playing bridge and attending Sunday School and being with her children and grandchildren.

Joan was preceded in death by her husband; parents; and sister, Jeanine and husband, Bill Ray.
Survivors: Son, Don Leslie Grimes, Jr and wife, Jayne Joiner Grimes of Dallas; daughter, Carol Jean Johnson and husband, Alan Eugene Johnson of Midland; grandchildren, Jacob Alan Johnson and wife, Alicia of Spring Branch, Matthew Roy Johnson of Houston, Carolyn Hopkins Grimes of Dallas, Leslie Allan Grimes of Dallas and William Malone Grimes of Dallas; great grandson, Wyatt Alan Johnson; and niece, Melinda Jo Ray of Granbury.