Lois Black Booth

Lois Booth, an energy data consultant and mother of three daughters died April 24, 2025, in Sunnyvale, California, after a long illness. On August 1, 2025 she would have been 93.

Mrs. Booth was born in Glen Cove, New York, the first of the three daughters of Joseph Jefferson Black, an architect, and Eleanor Fox Black, a civic leader and homemaker. At the age of two, Lois moved with her parents to Royalty, Texas, where Mr. Black had taken a job working for his father, W. A. Black, an early Permian Basin drilling contractor. In 1935 the family moved to Midland, where she attended Midland High School.

In 1950, she went to Goucher College in Maryland, graduating in 1953 with Phi Beta Kappa, and then earned a masters degree in education. She found it impossible to get the job she wanted in the State Department despite having graduated among the top students in her class at a prestigious school and returned to Midland and worked as an elementary teacher.

She married a local, Richard Jackson, in 1954, and they lived together for 20 years, moving between Dallas, Roswell NM, Midland, El Paso, and Phoenix before settling in Houston in 1964. They brought up three daughters, Pamela, Nancy, and Valerie, sending them to St. John's for high school, and helping them get into first-rank colleges. All three kept their "maiden" names. Pamela Jackson, a graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe, is now a semi-retired pediatrician at the University of Vermont Medical Center and an associate professor at the university. Valerie Jackson, a graduate of Stanford University, is an orthopedic physical therapist in Los Altos, California. Nancy Jackson, also a Stanford alumna, a computer systems developer, died in 2019.

With her second husband Derrick Booth, a British journalist, Mrs. Booth moved to the Austin area from Houston in 1993. Together they operated Subsea Data Systems, a service for oil and gas companies, investors, and market experts.

For her Mrs. Booth was a student of politics, history and an advocate for women's rights.) She was the religious education director at Emerson Unitarian Church in Houston, and a volunteer for Camp Fire Girls and the League of Women Voters.

The Booths retired to the San Francisco Bay area to be close to two of Lois's daughters. Derrick Booth died in 2016.

Lois Booth was the last living daughter of Joe and Eleanor Black. Her brother, Roger Black of Saint Pete Beach, Florida, is her one living sibling. Her sister, Gail Heisler, passed away in Houston in 2020. Dawn Black-Fox (born Dorothy Black) died in 2022 in Santa Maria, California.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.