Jesse Athol Secrest's Obituary
SECREST, JESSE ‘ATHOL’ passed Wednesday morning surrounded by his loving wife of 72 years and children. He was born in Sylvan, Lamar County, TX on July 6, 1920 to Jesse Talmadge Secrest and Nora Allie Geers. Athol grew up with his seven brothers and two sisters on a cotton farm east of Paris, TX. He attended Lamar Junior College until November 14, 1940 when he enlisted in the US Army for World War II commissioning as a Field Artillery Officer at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Athol married Audrey Jewell Covey of Corpus Christi, Texas on August 5, 1941 in Dallas, Texas before shipping out with his Howitzer artillery platoon to the North Africa Campaign landing at Casablanca, French Morocco on November 8, 1941. With the Allied forces, he engaged Germany’s General Rommel across to Tunis, Tunisia where on November 25th they crossed to Sicily prior to liberating Italy. His unit then shipped to England to stage for the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France. He served honorably under General Patton with the European Campaign in France, Belgium, and Germany ending his WWII service in Czechoslovakia. He returned to Texas graduating from the University of Houston School of Pharmacy to begin a lifelong career counseling and comforting generations of patrons in his pharmacies in Sugar Land and Dallas Texas. As we remember our father, mentor, exemplar, confidant, and friend, we find happiness and humor in life as he did. He was kind and caring to family, friend and stranger, always finding the good in people. Jesse Athol Secrest is survived by his beloved and devoted wife, Audrey Jewell Secrest of Carrollton, Texas; daughters, Peggy and Ron Ables of Highland Village, Texas, Pamela and Hartmut Jung of Augsburg, Germany, and Novelyn (Penny) Secrest of Flower Mound, Texas, and sons, Jeffrey and Mary Secrest of Richardson, Texas and Jon Secrest of Dallas, Texas; brothers, John, Thales, Merwyn and Kenneth; sisters, Novelyn and Martha; and many grandchildren and great grandchildren.
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