Janice Cox Brown

A memorial service for Janice Cox Brown, 89, of Coppell, Texas, will be held on Saturday, November 12 at 2:00 p.m. at Burks-Walker-Tippit chapel, with the Rev. Donna Skorheim officiating. Visitation will be Friday, November 11 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Mrs. Brown passed away peacefully in Carrollton, Texas on October 31, with family by her side.

She was born in Rusk County, Texas on June 12, 1933, and grew up in New Summerfield, Cherokee County, Texas. Early 1940 summers were spent with her maternal grandparents, Bertie and Regina (Stockton) Altman, where her grandfather managed the six section Rixey Ranch, at Clayton, New Mexico. She and her brother, Gilbert Jr., helped their grandfather around his ranch, dipping cattle, moving cattle to summer and winter pastures, checking out windmills, and helped her grandmother in her garden. It was a fun time of picnics and get-togethers with family - aunts, uncles and cousins. Those summers were remembered as among the happiest in her early years.

In 1955 she moved to Tyler, where she was in banking for six years, followed by thirty years with a firm of petroleum geologists and consulting engineers. She was secretary and bookkeeper for George W. Pirtle. For the last 20 years, until her retirement in 2013, she was an oil and gas specialist in the Southside Bank trust department.

Janice Cox Brown was co-founder of the East Texas Genealogical Society, Tyler, organized in April 1977. She was charter president and served on the executive board and as editor of the society's monthly newsletter and various other offices for over 37 years. Her early love of family history, combined with genealogical research and her dedication to family, opened the door in 1962 for writing and preserving family stories. With a treasury of more than 100 oral history tapes collected over many years from family interviews, she used them as a basis for her books.

She was preceded in death by parents Gilbert and Frankie (Altman) Cox; and two brothers, Gilbert O. Cox, Jr. and Douglas Eugene Cox. Mrs. Brown was a member of Green Acres Baptist Church, Tyler, and was a 45-year member of the Order of the Eastern Star.

She is survived by three daughters, Jennifer Elbert and husband Roland of Coppell; Teresa Collipp and husband Gary of Lantana, Texas; and Amy Nguyen and husband Tony of Coppell; one sister, Eva Cox of Pensacola, Florida; five beloved grandchildren, Brennan, Dillon, Julieanna, Emily and Christopher; six great-grandchildren, and many loving nieces and nephews. Throughout her life, she was youthful and playful, interested and interesting. She will be loved and remembered for her positive outlook, initiative, hard-working and delightful nature, and her generosity.

If desired, memorials may be made to the East Texas Genealogical Society, The International Rescue Committee, or the charity of one's choice.