Drucilla Jett

Drucilla Joanna Jett

February 2, 1930 – February 28, 2019 (89 years old)

Drucilla Joanna Jett was born in Bluewater, NM, on February 2, 1930, to Henry “Arthur” Myrick and Birdie Beatrice Beason Myrick.  Arthur married Birdie, and Arthur’s brother married Birdie’s sister (two brothers married two sisters), and they stayed together their whole adult lives.  Growing up living behind the general store/gas station her parents owned on Route 66, in Bluewater, next to the mechanics shop her aunt and uncle owned, Drucilla basically had two sets of parents.  She and her sister, Marcella, worked the family business, cutting meat, selling jeans, pumping gas, washing car windows and checking oil.  Her family nicknamed her Tommie.  She loved leaping from the rafters in the ice house down into the sawdust that covered the ice they cut from Bluewater Lake, and playing with the five dogs her family had in the store. She got a kick out of the tourists being surprised to find a kid, a girl kid at that, pumping their gas.  She loved working in the library in high school and often recommended books for her fellow students to read.  She married her high school sweetheart and moved to Albuquerque where she raised five children.  After their divorce, she supported those five children without child support on a woman’s wage of the time by working in Sears’ collection department where she was the top bill collector because she talked with the customers about their lives and asked for the smallest of payments to show good faith.  She even approached her co-workers occasionally to take up a collection to help pay a particular customer’s bill, always with no luck.  She also sold Avon, Judy Lee jewelry, and Tupperware, trying to make ends meet for herself and her children.  She took her motherhood very seriously and raised five good kids.  She made fried egg and bacon fold-over sandwiches for them to take with them to school—no child of hers went off to school without breakfast.  She let one animal-loving daughter keep a skunk, a ground hog, and a raven at different times.  Shovel in hand, she irrigated her parents’ Albuquerque south valley property from the ditch—definitely a hard job, even for a man.  She remarried, but divorced after a few traumatic years.  She took care of her bedridden father after a full day at work, even giving him artificial respiration as he was dying.  Then she married Thomas Jett and lived happily many years (35 years), raising one of her seven grandchildren.  She is survived by her 5 children, by 6 of her 7 grandchildren, and by her 14 great grandchildren.  She loved them, hugged them, and smothered them in kisses every chance she got.  Every Sunday she made biscuits and gravy for the whole family and a neighbor or two.  She loved cats, had pet geese and chickens, and raised parakeets that she taught to talk.  Even after she became blind in one eye, she was usually the winner of a pool table-like game called carroms.  She loved watching Steve Stucker on Channel 4.  When she found out he was coming to visit her in the hospital, she asked “MY Steve Stucker is coming?” and wanted her hair combed.  She loved eating tomatoes, chocolate, cookies and fried squash.  She made a mean red chile stacked enchilada, delicious zucchini chocolate cake and a wonderful buttermilk pie.  When you drove away after a visit, she had to stand by the street and wave to you until you were out of sight.  She was tough and strong, even survived a brain tumor in her younger years and colon cancer.  Drucilla was kind and sweet, loved by all.  She believed in Jesus and the Golden Rule.  Despite the installation of a pacemaker, her heart valves couldn’t pump enough blood to keep the kidneys going and pneumonia also set in.  She died February 28, 2019, at age 89.  Graveside services will be held at the PioneerMemorial Park in Bluewater, NM, on March 8, 2019, at 2:00 p.m.  She always told us “Love, Love” and “Bye for Now.”