Star-Telegram.com: Obituaries

Nurse kept patients laughing

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:14 CDT

By TERRY LEE GOODRICH

FORT WORTH — On the off chance that Ethel Ansley didn’t light up the room with her smile, she usually had a backup: tiny flashing lights on her earrings, rings that lit up, glow-in-the-dark shoelaces.

One way or another, the nurse with the offbeat scrubs saw to it that she brightened the day for the hundreds of patients she cared for through the years at a Fort Worth dialysis center.

"She had a funny Christmas top, red shoes with a red shoelace on one foot and a green one on the other, Christmas ornament earrings. She even had a red headband with a spring on it and mistletoe attached that would wave back and forth, and patients would give her a kiss because of the mistletoe," said her sister, Ray Bridget Moore of Arlington.

"She wanted to make them laugh, take their minds off what they were going through."

When Mrs. Ansley was diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2007, she stayed on the job as long as she could — until several months ago. But the cancer spread to her back and brain, and finally, she felt too bad after rounds of radiation and chemotherapy to work.

She died Tuesday morning at a Fort Worth hospice, with friends and family nearby.

Mrs. Ansley was born Oct. 20, 1951, in Fort Worth. She graduated from Carter-Riverside High School in 1970 and from the nursing program at John Peter Smith Hospital in 1977.

Her nickname was "the queen of dialysis," her colleagues said.

Licensed vocational nurse Sebrina Wiltse of Whitney said she met Mrs. Ansley at the dialysis center on Jan. 4, 1980, when "I was fresh out of school, young and timid. I picked her out and said, 'I want to be her friend.’

"Plain ol’ just wasn’t good enough for her," Wiltse said. "She made the most of everything and really made a difference in kind of a dreary place. . . . Everything she wore had light or glitter, pretty patterns. Nothing boring, nothing plain."

Mrs. Ansley sometimes posed a challenge for her supervisors, among them Kay Sharp of Hurst.

"She was a little outside the box" — particularly when she decided to dress as a fish bowl, wearing clear garbage bags filled with live fish, Sharp said.

"But the patients said that sometimes she was the only thing that made them smile during the four hours" of dialysis, she said..

Mrs. Ansley was a member of Riverside Baptist Church and loved visiting antique malls and going fishing and boating with her husband and children.

Near the end of her life, she still looked on the bright side.

"She’s always been a little on the heavy side, and she lost lots and lots of weight during her treatments," Moore said.

"The doctor finally said, 'Now Ethel, I know you want to keep going, but maybe you should consider quality of life’ " and cease treatments, Moore said.

"She was like a petulant child, saying 'If you insist.’ But when he told her she’d get her appetite back, her eyes lit up and she said, 'Oh, thank you. It’s good I didn’t throw away my fat clothes.’ "

Her funeral was Thursday, with burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth.

Survivors: Husband, Pat Ansley; sons, Acie McCullough and Harold "Rip" McCullough; sisters, Ray Bridget Moore and Marilynne Reeves.

Chucko was popular TV clown

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:02 CDT

Charles M. Runyon, who as Chucko the Birthday Clown was a popular Los Angeles children’s TV show host in the 1950s and ’60s, has died. He was 86.

Runyon died Saturday of respiratory failure in an assisted living facility in Grants Pass, Ore.

On KABC Channel 7 from 1955 to 1963 and on KTTV Channel 11 from 1963 to 1964, Runyon’s Chucko the Clown was a familiar — and welcome — sight to thousands of young southern California viewers.

The jovial and genteel clown wore a spinning merry-go-round hat with his name on it, a red-and-white clown suit with a fluffy Elizabethan collar and cuffs, and white gloves. He had arching blue eyebrows on a white face with a rhinestone-tipped nose and an upturned red smile.

Former nurse, TEA official dies at 71

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:02 CDT

By JESSAMY BROWN

ARLINGTON — Sunny Mayfield wasn’t afraid as she stepped from the world of nursing into state education and worked to improve the health of children.

A nurse, Ms. Mayfield was director of school health programs for the Texas Education Agency until she retired in 1994.

Ms. Mayfield, 71, died suddenly Oct. 6 of kidney cancer, relatives said.

A Houston native, Ms. Mayfield graduated from Houston’s Lamar High School in 1954. She attended Baylor University, married and raised three children, Dayna, Charles and Duane.

Ms. Mayfield later returned to school and graduated from Dallas Baptist University in 1975. She worked as an emergency room nurse at Parkland Memorial Hospital and Medical City Dallas Hospital, relatives said.

"She liked the excitement of it. It was something different every night," said Charles R. "Chuck" Thomas Jr., Ms. Mayfield’s surviving son.

While her children were in high school, Ms. Mayfield went on to earn a master’s degree in medical/surgical nursing education and administration from the University of Texas at Arlington. She was later a Richardson school district nurse.

In 1982, Ms. Mayfield moved to Austin to work for the Texas Education Agency, developing curriculum and administering programs.

She served as a liaison between the state and Texas school district nursing administrators. She also worked with school health programs such as physical education, nutrition programs and sex education, former colleagues said.

"It was a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor and build the school nursing program," said Thomas, of Arlington. "She made sure there was some degree of sex education; it was not just abstinence only. She fought hard for appropriate sex education. She was a battler."

Ms. Mayfield supervised Bill Nance, former director of TEA’s pregnancy, education and parenting program, from 1990 to 1993, Nance said.

"I always went in early, at 6:30 a.m., and she was always there already," Nance said. "She had the ability to meet people and make things happen. That’s a talent that not a lot of people have. She could move through that bureaucracy as good as anybody I knew."

Other survivors include a daughter, Dayna D. Kerr of Cleburne and husband Woody; and daughter-in-law Helen Thomas.

Services Visitation: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Moore-Bowen Road Funeral Home Chapel, 4216 S. Bowen Road, Arlington.

Funeral: 9 a.m. Friday, Rush Creek Christian Church, 2401 S.W. Green Oaks Boulevard, Arlington.

Interment: 4 p.m. Friday, Bluffton Cemetery, RR 2241, Lone Grove near Burnet.

Educator's daughters keep promise

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:10 CDT

By ALEX BRANCH

FORT WORTH — Joyce Casburn Welton loved art, teaching and neighborhood children. In the 1960s, she found a way to combine all three.

Mrs. Welton organized impromptu children’s camps at her Wedgwood home. Every child within two blocks met in her back yard each day, making papier-mache figures and other crafts.

"She had the older teenagers in the neighborhood be camp counselors," said her daughter Sarah Rose Welton. "It didn’t cost the kids any money; everything we did was made with things we had around the house."

Mrs. Welton, who also once taught at Daggett Elementary and the now-defunct McMasters School in Fort Worth, died Sunday, several days after she suffered her second stroke.

Neither her age nor birth date shall be discussed, her daughters said.

"That was her thing; we didn’t put either in the obituary," said her daughter Lynn Welton-Beatty. "We’ll be violating her wishes just putting her birth date on her gravestone."

Born in Graham, she earned her bachelor’s degree in art from Texas Woman’s University in Denton and, later, her master’s degree in education from Texas Christian University.

She sang solo at the Central Methodist Church and saved stacks of programs from services held in 1959. Her daughters found them while going through her things after she died.

At church, Mrs. Welton met Ralph E. Welton Jr., who worked for years at General Dynamics. They married in 1960. Almost every year, they vacationed with their daughters at Estes Park, Colo.

Mrs. Welton had a habit of taking in stray dogs, Sarah Welton said. She loved all animals except snakes. When her daughters were young, they once tried to fool her with a shoelace. She responded by locking them out of the house.

After they retired, Mrs. Welton and her husband frequently went on Alaska cruises. She volunteered with the Symphony League of Fort Worth.

In recent years, Ralph Welton began to suffer from dementia, and Mrs. Welton was his primary caregiver until she suffered a stroke last year and was partially paralyzed on her right side.

In January, the couple moved into separate units at the Tanglewood Oaks Assisted Living Center. Two or three times a week, Mrs. Welton drove a motorized cart to her husband’s unit to visit.

Despite his worsening dementia, Ralph Welton wrote love letters to his wife.

"We found this drawer full of Post-it notes where he had written things like 'I love Joyce,’ " Welton-Beatty said. "Just short, little notes, but there must have been a thousand of them A whole drawer full."

Retired chef at Ridglea Country Club came from Europe

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:16 CDT

By YAMIL BERARD

FORT WORTH — In the days when Joseph Sennhauser was executive chef at Ridglea Country Club, the chateaubriand was cooked purely to please the palate.

Was there any mention in Mr. Sennhauser’s kitchens of finishing the meat with a butter substitute? Mon Dieu, non! But real cream in a chocolate mousse or a souffle glace au Grand Marnier? That was a definite oui.

"Back then, nobody cared about the calories or the cholesterol," said Hildegard Widmer, 67, a longtime friend. "Desserts were very rich."

Mr. Sennhauser, 93, died Saturday.

He was born July 16, 1915, in Switzerland, the youngest of 12 children. After seven years of elementary school and two years of high school, he spent one year in France to learn the language.

By age 16, he was back home and had chosen the culinary arts as his trade.

He returned to Paris, then traveled to Italy and Germany to perfect his craft.

He spent 10 years as assistant to the executive chef at Zurich’s Baur au Lac, one of Europe’s most luxurious hotels. There he met Hildegard Widmer’s husband, Alphonse Widmer, 15 years his junior, who had just completed his apprenticeship.

"Right away, we became good friends," said Alphonse Widmer, who operated The Balcony restaurant on Camp Bowie Boulevard for 25 years.

The two worked together in the Baur au Lac kitchen for several years, creating classic French cuisine. They also enjoyed soccer, cross-country running and golf, Widmer said.

In 1956, Mr. Sennhauser came to America and began working at Ridglea. He was known as "maybe a little tough," Hildegard Widmer said.

"He wanted people to do everything right," she said.

Mr. Sennhauser was always active, running marathons and playing golf.

In 1979, he retired and bought a small farm near Meridian.

In March 2006, he wrote his own obituary, telling of a fall during one of his regular walks.

He also spoke of being "happy and content" even though he couldn’t play golf anymore because it made him dizzy — "realizing nothing lasts forever."

Service 2 p.m. today at Thompson’s Harveson & Cole Funeral Home, 702 Eighth Ave. in Fort Worth. A reception will follow at Ridglea Country Club. Burial: Planned for Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery in Kirchberg, Switzerland.

Obituary: J.D. 'Dick' Livingstone loved his family farm and Texas Wesleyan

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:24 CDT

By AMAN BATHEJA

When J.D. "Dick" Livingstone found a place he liked, he stuck with it.

Throughout his long life, Mr. Livingstone found two places from which he just couldn’t keep away.

The first was his family farm in Grandview where he was born and spent most of his retirement.

The second was Texas Wesleyan University, where he obtained his degree and then spent most of his career.

Mr. Livingstone’s children say he found happiness centering his life on those two places. He died Thursday of natural causes. He was 93.

Mr. Livingstone was born Jan. 27, 1915, in Grandview, one of nine siblings. He split his childhood between going to school and picking cotton on his family’s farm.

In 1935, Mr. Livingstone hitchhiked to Fort Worth to start college at what was then Texas Wesleyan College, said his daughter Susan Jackson of Bedford. Relying on a football scholarship, he graduated in 1939 with a business degree.

"He played in every game and every quarter of every game. He was always very proud of that," Jackson said.

After a few years coaching football in Pampa and a stint in the Navy during World War II, Mr. Livingstone returned to Fort Worth to work at Brantley-Draughon Business College, which Texas Wesleyan then owned. In 1968, he was put in charge of fundraising for Texas Wesleyan and stayed there until he retired, in 1976, Jackson said.

Mr. Livingstone’s four children from two marriages all attended their father’s alma mater and were regularly reminded of his legacy.

"I attended 45 years after Dad went, and people still remembered him. I remember people saying 'Your father was Mr. TWC,’ " said his daughter Amy Nichols of Grandview, referring to the school’s former name. In 1980, the university named Mr. Livingstone alumnus of the year.

After retiring, Mr. Livingstone and his second wife, Grace, lived a quiet life on his family’s farm. Mr. Livingstone enjoyed ranching cattle and raccoon hunting.

"I think his heart has always been on the farm," Nichols said.

Other survivors include sons Jeff of Grandview and Jerry of Grapevine, brother James of Fort Worth and sisters Mary Seymour of Palm Desert, Calif.; Nell Wilson of Itasca; and Patsy Prestridge of Fort Worth.

Funeral 3 p.m. today, First United Methodist Church, 300 S. Fourth St., Grandview. Burial at Grandview Cemetery immediately afterward.

Obituary: Carmen Kathryn Goldthwaite ran Coffee and Tea House of Fort Worth for 13 years

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:45 CDT

By DARREN BARBEE

FORT WORTH — Born in her grandparents’ bedroom on a June day in 1915, the baby girl was so small that few expected her to live.

Carmen Kathryn Fitch was carried across a wheat field and, the story goes, placed in an oven to keep her warm, her sister, Frances Quinn, said Friday. This was before incubators and hospitals were an option.

"We called her Tiny because when she was born, she was real tiny," Quinn said. "Back then, the doctors and nurses and things were not like it is now."

Tiny grew up, married Maynard Goldthwaite and lived a rich life as mother, secretary, traveler and entrepreneur. But it was her friendship, the telling of a good story and a way of making you feel important that defined her, family and friends said.

She also made a delicious frozen cappuccino.

Mrs. Goldthwaite, 93, of Fort Worth, died Tuesday of cancer.

Her daughter, Carmen Goldthwaite, said her mother was an "inveterate optimist" who smiled in every family picture. She survived the Great Depression and was a woman strangers could lean on.

"I hit the lotto when I got her for a mom," Carmen Goldthwaite said.

As the second-oldest of five sisters, Mrs. Goldthwaite grew up happy and carefree on a wheat and dairy farm on the plains of Floydada, near Lubbock. Once she baked a pie for someone, but Quinn and two other sisters ate it.

"She chased us through the wheat field," Quinn said. "She kind of used a switch on us for eating her pie. That would be a funny thing — it is now. It wasn’t then."

She attended college for about a year, Quinn said.

"People didn’t have too much money," she said. "So she did not get to finish college, which always kind of broke her heart."

Mrs. Goldthwaite learned to become a good listener. Once, at the Downtown Fort Worth Association, where she worked, a young man who had been in prison sat at her desk. He had started barber school but was discouraged.

"He was going to go back to burglary," Carmen Goldthwaite said. "She listened. She didn’t rush in trying to fix people’s stuff. And she said: 'Why don’t you wait on that decision? Just go on back to school.’ And he did."

Mrs. Goldthwaite also worked as secretary to Sol Brachman, president of Producers Supply and Tool Co.; as executive secretary to W.C. Weeden, president of General Engineering Corp.; and as an administrative assistant at Overcash-Goodman Enterprises.

After her husband died, in 1979, she retired and spent time traveling with her sisters. In 1984, she and her daughter opened the Coffee and Tea House of Fort Worth on Park Hill Drive, the first shop of its kind in Cowtown. They started with 37 varieties of coffee and 57 of tea.

Business was good, and they developed a loyal clientele.

The shop was open for 13 years until chains such as Starbucks came into vogue.

Mrs. Goldthwaite was a member of organizations including the Woman’s Club and the Mary Isham Keith Chapter of the DAR and did volunteer work at Cook Children’s Medical Center.

She was a member of Unity Church of Fort Worth.

Obituary: Nick Reynolds, folk singer was founding member of Kingston Trio

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:20 CDT

SAN DIEGO — Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the Kingston Trio who jump-started the revival folk scene of the late 1950s and paved the way for artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, has died. He was 75.

Mr. Reynolds had been hospitalized with acute respiratory disease and other illnesses, and died Wednesday in San Diego after his family took him off life support, his son Joshua Reynolds said.

"Dad was so happy he turned people on to music in a way that people could really approach it, in a simple and honest way," Josh Reynolds told The Associated Press.

The Kingston Trio’s version of the 19th-century folk song Tom Dooley landed the group a No. 1 spot on the charts in 1958 and launched the band’s career.

Born on July 27, 1933, in San Diego, Nicholas Reynolds demonstrated an early love of music and did sing-alongs with his two sisters and their father, who taught him to play guitar.

Mr. Reynolds graduated from Coronado High School in 1951 and attended the University of Arizona and San Diego State University before transferring to Menlo College, near Palo Alto. He graduated in 1956.

It was during the mid-1950s that Nicholas Reynolds met Bob Shane, who introduced him to Stanford student Dave Guard. The three formed the Kingston Trio.

In 1958, Tom Dooley earned Mr. Reynolds, Guard and Shane a trophy for best country and western performance at the first Grammys. There was no folk category then.

The trio won a Grammy the next year for best folk performance for its album The Kingston Trio at Large.

Mr. Reynolds typically handled the middle part of the trio’s three-part harmonies, sometimes adding percussion accents.

Later member John Stewart joined the Kingston Trio in 1961, replacing Guard. Stewart died in January, also in San Diego.

After leaving the group in 1967, Mr. Reynolds moved to Oregon, where he took a break from music to raise his family, according to his son.

In 1991, Mr. Reynolds rejoined Shane in a reconstituted version of the Trio. He stayed with the group until retiring in 2003, his son said.

Mr. Reynolds is survived by his wife, Leslie; sons Joshua and John Pike Reynolds; daughters Annie Reynolds Moore and Jennifer Reynolds; and two sisters.

House Peters Jr., actor known as Mr. Clean, dies at 92

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:20 CDT

LOS ANGELES — House Peters Jr., a TV actor who became the original Mr. Clean in Procter & Gamble’s commercials for household cleaners, died Wednesday. He was 92.

Mr. Peters died of pneumonia at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Los Angeles, said his son, Jon Peters.

The actor’s most memorable role came as Mr. Clean: a bald, muscular man with a hoop earring and no-nonsense attitude toward dirt and grime. From the late 1950s through the early 1960s, Mr. Peters helped advertise the famous household cleaner.

He played many supporting roles through his career, appearing in Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone and Lassie.

Mr. Peters’ acting career spanned from 1935 to 1967, according to his Web site. He also wrote an autobiography, Another Side of Hollywood, about growing up the son of an actress and silent film actor in Beverly Hills. His father, Robert House Peters Sr., has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mr. Peters is survived by his wife, Lucy Pickett, a daughter, two sons and four grandchildren.

The Rev. Georgia Evelyn Jaubert-Jones, 59, ordained bishop

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:17 CDT

By TREBOR BANSTETTER

FORT WORTH — As a child, the Rev. Georgia Evelyn Jaubert-Jones was fascinated by science and studied biology, chemistry and other scientific subjects.

Her other passion was Christian service, which was nurtured by her parents, who were active in evangelism, her brother said this week.

The twin zeal for science and spirituality drove the major decisions of her life, first to become a scientific researcher and later to dedicate her life to ministry, eventually becoming the first woman to be ordained a bishop of Christ Holy Sanctified Church of America.

"She was so capable in science, such a good student in things like chemistry," said James Jaubert, her brother. "But she also had a passion for people, which I think is what led her to her ministry."

The Rev. Jaubert-Jones died Sept. 26 of multiple organ failure. She was 59.

She was born in 1948 in Beaumont to Geneva Evelyn Smith Jaubert and Whitley Howard Jaubert.

The family moved to Fort Worth five years later.

The Rev. Jaubert-Jones graduated from I.M. Terrell High School, where she excelled in the sciences, Jaubert said. After graduation, she studied biochemistry at Wiley College in Marshall, earning a bachelor of science degree.

She worked in research for Texas Refinery Corp. in Fort Worth. She later worked for the oil company Arco in Channelview, outside Houston. She also worked as a laboratory researcher at W.O. Moss Regional Hospital in Lake Charles, La.

But her religious calling could not be ignored, Jaubert said. It inspired her to begin a Christian ministry in Lake Charles, working with inner-city residents.

By 1975, she decided it was time to work with her ministry full time and she co-founded a church, Evangel Temple, with a cousin. In 1976, she was licensed and ordained as the church’s pastor.

"She really felt that was the overriding mission of her life — to help people," Jaubert said. "It was something she first saw with our parents, and I think she always wanted to follow that example."

In 2002, she was ordained a bishop in her Pentecostal denomination. She became the church’s presiding bishop in 2006.

"It’s not an easy thing, being in that position," Jaubert said. "But she always knew that she had been chosen, and that’s where she got her strength."

Other survivors include two children, Erika Braxter and Erinne Jones; a sister, Judith Pendleton; and two grandchildren.

Services Funeral: 11 a.m. Saturday at Heavenly Gospel Church of God in Christ, 3134 Stalcup Road, Fort Worth. Burial: Cedar Hill Memorial Park

She really felt that was the overriding mission of her life — to help people. It was something she first saw with our parents. . . ."

James Jaubert