Norma Faye Jordan

No one today really knows when she was born and she did not do a lot to clear this up except to say she was born on Friday the 13th. Born in a sharecropper’s house with no plumbing, she had to leave high school to help support the family when her father contracted tuberculosis but not before being voted Dyersburg High School Queen as a sophomore. After several jobs and several years she became the cashier at Siler’s Café, her Aunt’s restaurant in downtown Dyersburg, Tennessee.

“Fay Jackson, young Dyersburg bathing beauty who has won practically every possible title in the city, added another to her long list last night by winning the title of “Miss Dyersburg Jaycee”. She won out over more than thirty of the city’s most beautiful girls.”

She had a pretty high profile in Dyersburg, she was known for her personality as much as her beauty. She was runner-up in one beauty contest but was more proud of being voted “Miss Congeniality” by her peers. She was always more interested in learning about you rather than talking about herself but, liked to trade stories, too. She never forgot a face or the name and could recall where everyone ever lived!

She frustrated all the local boys when she caught the eye of a young engineer in training passing through town while surveying for the Tennessee Valley Authority. On their first date Bill told her to have faith in him, they could accomplish anything together. Two weeks later they married and set up house in a used airstream trailer while he completed college on the GI bill. That union lasted 65 years until Bill passed in 2018 and from this auspicious beginning Faye and Bill made their home of 50 years in Highland Park, Texas.

Mom had a presence about her, she once waded into a police stand-off then, to the surprise of the officers, bolted directly into her rental house to confront her tenants making a ruckus while playing cards. Her tenants didn’t want to jeopardize the frozen turkeys and hams that came on big holidays and candy filled baskets on Easter and Halloween. It all ended peacefully. But she was the one who laid down the law when the tenant at the ranch didn’t do his chores.

“Stop that ruckus!” She had a way of speaking that gave away her Tennessee roots. Some roadside advice to her grandson, ”Pull down yer britches after yer in the thicket.”. “Oh Bill, let someone else talk!” was heard regularly along with “Bill, stop flappin’ yer gums”. My favorite, which even stopped Grandpa mid-sentence was “ Bill stop eatin’ with yer mouth full!”

The baby of her family, she had a young soul, she said she felt as if she “was still in her twenties”. Her life was remarkable, filtered through her loving eyes, in fact, her favorite song was “What a Wonderful World” written by Louis Armstrong.

The colors of the rainbow

So pretty in the sky

Are also the faces

Of people going by

I see friends shaking hands, saying

“How do you do?”

They’re really saying “I love you”.

Faye and Bill raised William Burton Jordan (Sarah) and Laura Jordan Sargent (Brion) who blessed them with their grandchildren, Grace, Thomas, Matthew, William, John Henry and Caleb.

Such was the life of our beloved Norma Faye.