Joseph Owens

1936 - 2021

Joseph Owens
November 14, 1936 - September 11, 2021
Weatherford, Texas - Joe Owens, 84, passed away Saturday, September 11, 2021.
Visitation: 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, October 13, 2021, at Mount Olivet Funeral Home.
Joe was raised up on farm land in the mountains of North Carolina where a few remaining family members on his parents and siblings lived up and till the time of his death.
Joe was survived by his only daughter, Pamela Wagner; his grandson, Jason Wagner; his granddaughter, Sammy Wagner; and great-grandson, Silas Paul Ashenfelter, all of Springtown, Texas where Joe also lived.
In the late 50's Joe Owens joined the US Marine Corp where he later met Bob Whitehead Sr. in the Marines.
Joe and Bob became lifelong friends and business partners together. After Bob and his family came back from Columbia, Bob called and told Joe, "Come to Fort Worth, and I will put your name up in lights and make you a millionaire".
Well, Joe did come, and over a 30+ year period all of that did happen. Joe was part of the Uncle Joe's Pawn family of some 12 stores created by Bob Whitehead and family along with Joe until the company assets were sold in their entirety to Cash America in 1992. Joe and Bob remained business partners in several land investment opportunities throughout the years even after the sale of the pawn shop operations and up until Bob Whitehead's death in 1999.
Joe went on to partner up with Bobby Whitehead Jr, some years after the Uncle Joe's acquisition in Weatherford, Texas bringing life briefly back into the Uncle Joe's brand and then later on opened up his own pawn shop in Springtown, Texas - "Uncle Money's" which was close to where he lived, and of which he worked almost on a daily basis right up until the time of his illness / death.
Joe was known by many souls in this world and left an indelible mark on the pawn world. There is hardly a pawnbroker anywhere in the state of Texas who had not known Joe and or heard some of his stories or stories about him and to his credit he was a legend in the Pawn Industry.
Over the years he taught many souls how to work in and or operate pawnshops. Many of those souls still work in the industry today as a result of working with Joe and the Uncle Joe's brand, he even taught Jerry Whitehead how to write loans and run the business in general from the time he was about 11 years old forward back in the day.
Joe was a cancer survivor, of which his daughter, Pamela and family moved down from Overland Park, Kan. to stay near him, nurse and support him back to health some years back and to help with his pawnshop, land and other projects right up until his death. So, Uncle Joe had also been involved in teaching his own daughter his versions of how the pawn world and the pawn shop operates for which she still works within today now in her store "Uncle Money's".
For all of those who knew Joe, he was truly a one of kind individual. He was always a finely dressed Texan as we all saw him and as much as he often came off as a hard-nosed individual, he was actually a pretty soft guy down inside his hardened layers.
As the signs used to say at Uncle Joe's Pawn Shops back in the day, "The Man to Know is Uncle Joe", no truer words could have been said even today!!
God bless you Joe, you will be missed, loved and appreciated by many for what you did do with your time here on Earth.
Love to you ....