Joan Roach

1926 - 2025

Joan Roach

Feb 28, 1926 - Sep 18, 2025

Joan Roach

Billie Joan Roach, nee Parks, 99, of Chalk Bluff, passed away September 18, 2025 in Waco, Texas.

Visitation and Memorial Service will be at 10:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. respectively, Saturday, September 27, 2025 at First Baptist Church Waco with Dr. Matt Snowden officiating. Rev. Andy Muskrat will be music director for the service. Private burial will be at Moore Cemetery in Chalk Bluff.

Joan was born the first of six children in the Texas Panhandle town of Lakeview to Vivian and W. C. Parks on February 28, 1926 and grew up in Texline, Texas. She graduated from Texline High School as Salutatorian at the age of 16 - having been advanced 2 grades due to her classroom prowess (she would tell you it was because there a shortage of teachers and students). She attended Wayland Baptist College in Plainview, Texas, where she majored in Education and played basketball. In the fall of 1943, she married J. W. Roach (she called him William) in Clayton, New Mexico, and they shared over 66 years together as he pastored a number of churches across Texas until his passing in 2010.

Joan taught school during WWII at Lefors High School in Lefors, Texas, and said it was somewhat challenging mostly because she was no older than the students she was instructing. When William was called to pastor in Cleveland, Texas, Joan served as legal assistant to former state senator Gordon Burns and subsequently as a case manager with the Texas Department of Public Welfare, all while continuing her education at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville. Joan and William moved to Waco in 1956 for his graduate work at Baylor University, and Joan began her career of over 25 years with the Waco Independent School District. After her retirement, she co-founded Parks Family Buffet in Bellmead, Texas, carrying on a family legacy passed down from her mother and father. Joan was the epitome of a pastor's wife in all the best ways - always putting others ahead of herself and giving even when there was not really anything left to give. She wouldn't tell you unless you asked, but she gave as many gallons of blood as the Red Cross would let a person give over her lifetime. She was the best daughter, big sister, wife, mother, mother-in law, grandmother, great grandmother, Sunday school teacher, and friend that anyone could have. Joan has been a devoted member of First Baptist Church Waco for the past 36 years since she and William retired from the full-time ministry. She and William were selected Senior Adults of the Year in 2004.

Joan is preceded in death by her husband, her mother and father, sister Lynn Parks, brothers Neil and Don Parks, sisters-in-law Lois, Helen, and Yvonne Parks, brothers-in-law Wes Forbis and Frank Scott, and dear in-laws Herbert and LaDelle Stobbe. She is survived by her son, Marvin and wife, JoEllen; her grandsons Thomas and wife Sara, Matthew and husband Bryant, Nathan and girlfriend Kailynn Diaz, great-grandson Nico Gabriel Roach, sisters Ginger Forbis of Nashville, Tennessee and Judy Scott of Alvin, Texas, and numerous beloved nieces and nephews.

Special thanks to Venina Potter, FNP William Jacob French, Dr. Charles "Dutch" Shoultz, Ill, Rachel Brown and Kim Helton for their kind and compassionate care.

Memorials may be made to First Baptist Church Waco, First Baptist Preschool Development Center Waco, and Friends for Life.