Genevive Watkins

Obituary for Genevieve Ann Watkins Genevieve Watkins, 86, died on August 23, 2007 in Phoenix, Arizona at Gardiner Home. Service will be held at Grace Community Church on September 1, 2007 at 11:00 am with Rick Hale officiating followed by a graveside service at Memory Lawn Cemetery. Visitation will be Friday, August 31, 2007 from 5-8 pm, at the funeral home. Genevieve was born in Warwick, North Dakota on July 20, 1921 where she grew up and graduated from Warwick High School as valedictorian. She attended Valley City State College and taught one year at Ft. Toten, North Dakota, in a one-room school with eight grades and one teacher. Along with preparing lessons she also prepared the noon meals and served as the janitor. She rode to school on a sled pulled by horses in the depth of winter and lived with the family closest to the school. When she became ill with pneumonia, she and her sister moved to the warmer climate of California and a new teaching opportunity in Visalia, California. On September 1, 1944, she attended a dance for service men at which time she met Robert “Bob” Watkins who would propose on Thanksgiving Eve. The couple were married the following week at the Methodist Parsonage. After the war, the Watkins lived in Visalia, California where their first child, Patricia, was born in 1948. Due to the child’s need for a drier climate, the couple moved to Roswell, New Mexico, where Bob worked and retired from Anderson and Watkins. Daughter Linda was born in 1952. Gen, as her friends knew her, was a stay at home mother until 1957 when both children were in school. She began teaching at Child Garden School. She then took positions as a substitute teacher, teacher’s aide at Edgewood Elementary School, Librarian for LFD Elementary School, East Grand Plains Elementary and Edgewood School for a total of twenty-five years of service. Her priority in life was serving God and being a wife and a mother. Among other accomplishments, she played piano and directed the Children’s Choir at Aldersgate Methodist Church and taught Sunday school. In 1966, they joined Trinity Methodist Church where Bob served on the Board and Gen taught Fourth Grade. She was active in the Women’s Ministry until 1990. Her loving husband, Bob and her mother and father, Ray and Orah, preceded her in death. Gen is survived by her daughter, Patricia and her husband Ken Knutson and their daughter, Keely and son, Quin of Phoenix, AZ; daughter, Linda and her husband Harold Jones and their daughter Darla Henderson and her husband Chris of Albuquerque, NM; sons, Harold Jones, Jr. and his wife Angie of Gilbert, AZ; Richard Jones and his wife Misty of Albuquerque, NM; Robert Jones of Albuquerque, NM and eight great-grand children. She is also survived by a sister, Vivan Kee of Reseda, CA; two brothers, Ben Richardson of Redmond, WA and John Richardson of Ventura, CA and a cousin, Phyllis Schreadrer. Please share your memories of Genevieve with her family in the online register book at andersonbethany.com Services are under the direction of Anderson-Bethany Funeral Home & Crematory.

Genevive Watkins

July 20, 1921 - August 23, 2007