Joan Rosabelle Owens Cobb, 91, went to be with her Lord on August 17, 2019. Surrounded by family, she passed peacefully from this life in Community Hospice located in St. Vincent’s Riverside in Jacksonville, Florida. She loved her family dearly, and all of her many friends from throughout her life, from South Carolina, to Atlanta Georgia, to Jacksonville Florida.
Ever the southern lady, she was the sweetest person many people had ever known, (and most would say the best dressed!). She was born in Andrews, South Carolina to Mary Duncan Jones and Jessie Herbert Jones. Raised in Pleasant Hill, South Carolina by her mother and stepfather Cornelius Beaty Owens, she attended Pleasant Hill High School where she was on the Blue Devils basketball team, and started the first Home Economics class for the high school. The oldest of seven children, she was a teacher and leader of her siblings.
After attending business school, she began her working career in McColl, South Carolina where she was the office manager for the Snow White Laundry. She met, fell in love, and married Jerry Lawrence Cobb. They moved to Atlanta Georgia where he worked for Seaboard Railroad and she worked in the business office of a local company. There they had a daughter, Susan Rebecca Cobb, and in 1964, moved to Jacksonville, Florida.
The Cobb family joined Ortega Baptist Church, and shortly thereafter Joan was hired as the bookkeeper for the church. She later worked in the business offices of Rivergarden Hebrew Home and St. Catherine LaBoure Manor. During her professional life, and even more after retirement, she helped as a volunteer in the church working in the kitchen to help prepare fellowship dinners after Sunday services, and her special joy, tending to the smallest members of the church. She was a Christian woman in every way (and even though she was Baptist, she was a great ballroom dancer!).
Her family, both immediate and extended, was the center of her life. A faithful wife and devoted mother, she loved her late husband and her daughter more than words could express. She had a close relationship with her four sisters, and although they lived out of town they talked frequently, and she was definitely in her element when with one, or surrounded by all. She loved to have fun and was happiest when with her family and friends.
She acquired lifelong friends from growing up in South Carolina, at Ortega Baptist Church, the Riverside YMCA, all her neighbors, and the Windsor at Ortega where she lived for 4 years before moving back to her home of 50 years in Jacksonville. Her caregivers were also very dear to her.
She is survived by her daughter Susan Cobb Grandin (Mark), and sisters Cornelia Hunsucker Jurkowich, Christine Owens Capps (Herman), Shirley Owens Keefe (John), and Reba Jeanette Owens Morrison (Skip). She is predeceased by her husband, Jerry Lawrence Cobb, her mother Mary Duncan Owens, and brothers Joe Owens and Jaylyn Owens.
Visitation will be on Wednesday, August 21st in the chapel at Riverside Memorial Park from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the celebration of her life will be on Thursday, August 22, at First Baptist Church Downtown, Jacksonville, Hobson Auditorium at 2:30 p.m. Entombment will follow at Riverside Memorial Park.
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