Yolanda Elena Waddle

Yolanda Elena Waddle (nee Gonzalez) passed away midnight on August 18, 2025 at the age of 93. She grew up on Florence St. in Segundo Barrio where she attended Alamo Elementary back in the days when the winters brought snow. A proud graduate of Bowie High School in 1951, she enjoyed her responsibility as a P.E. leader and membership in the FHA program. Soon afterwards, she enrolled in secretarial courses at El Paso Technical Vocational, more familiarly known as "Tech" back in the day, which landed her a job at Mountain Bell Telephone. When she was 23, while playing a softball game at Washington Park on Mother's Day, she met a man from Arkansas named Jimmy Waddle, who was stationed at Biggs Air Force Base. They soon married and raised one son and two daughters here in El Paso. She walked them to school until they no longer needed to be walked, and she never missed a chance to make the acquaintances of babies she met along the way. After 57 years of marriage and the untimely death of the man she dearly loved, her younger daughter, Esther Mae, unwaveringly cared for her over the next thirteen years in the same Lower Valley home where she raised her family because there truly is no place like home. Yoli outlived many of the people she loved and befriended throughout her long life: her brothers Charlie and Goyo, her twin sister Lily, her half-sisters Rosie, Dorothy and Josie, and generous Aunt Emily and Uncle Leon. Yoli is survived by her half-sisters Alicia and Rosie, her three children, Jim (Patricia), Deborah, and Esther (Michael), as well as her three beloved grandchildren, Eugene (Lorena), Anne and Miranda, all of whom she took to Poki Roni to visit all the pretty horses.

A visitation will be held Tuesday, September 2, 2025 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM rosary at 6:00pm at Hillcrest Funeral Home, 1060 North Carolina Drive, El Paso, TX 79915. A funeral mass will occur Wednesday, September 3, 2025 at 9:30 AM at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 602 S Oregon St, El Paso, TX 79901 followed by a graveside service at Fort Bliss National Cemetery, 5200 Fred Wilson Ave, El Paso, TX 79906.