Gladys Mae Hailes

On April 26, 2022, Gladys Mae Hailes passed away peacefully at the age of 90 after a month-long series of medical ailments. Gladys was the mother of two children and devoted wife to her beloved husband, Jack O. Hailes.

She was born January 15, 1932 on a farm outside of Buckholts, Texas during the Great Depression. She was the oldest of four children. Her brother and sisters called her “Sister”. Through her childhood years, Gladys and her siblings helped their parents, Ernest and Vlasta Koenig pick cotton by hand. She learned how to overcome adversity at an early age. When she was nine years-old she suffered a severe lower back spinal injury from a playground slide accident. Her doctors order her to a full year of bedrest as the medical remedy for her spinal injury. After the year of bedrest, she was able to resume a normal childhood. Gladys met and fell in love with Jack during her high school years at Buckholts High School. On July 17, 1949 at the age of 17, she left the family farm when she married her high school sweetheart, Jack.

During the next few years, she and Jack moved around the country with stops in Austin, Dallas and Manhattan, Kansas. They finally settling down in Corpus Christi, Texas. As a team, Gladys and Jack worked hard and saved up for a house. In 1955 she and Jack accomplished their dream by buying with cash their first home. In or around late 1962, Gladys discovered her true calling, motherhood, gladly accepting guardianship of David B. Hailes. In January of 1963 she had her second son, Jack O. Hailes, Jr. She loved her two sons dearly. Gladys was very proud of the men and fathers that her sons had become.

During most of her Corpus Christi years, Gladys was a devoted “house-wife” and “stay-at-home-mom”. She was the ruler of everything domestic around the household. Her domestic skills were many including the art of sewing clothes for her family, cooking old fashion style meals, growing vegetables and flowers, keeping a spotlessly clean “museum quality” household, supporting her children in school, volunteering for her husband’s and children’s social groups’ related functions. She and Jack became owners of rental property and Gladys assisted in the upkeep and management of their rental cottage units. Gladys was an active member of St. Marks Lutheran Church and the Order of the Eastern Star. During her lifetime, she was also the mother of three miniature Schnauzers named Smokey, Tiger and Silver. She loved them just like her human children.

Ultimately Jack retired from Sechrist-Hall Roofing & Sheetmetal Company. In order to be close to their sons, they left Corpus Christi and moved to Cedar Park, Texas. During her Cedar Park phase of life, she enjoyed being a beloved Grandmother to four grandchildren and Great-grandmother to two great-grandchildren. In the early section of Jack’s retirement years, Gladys traveled with him all over the country. They did Hailes & Koenig genealogy related trips through the southeast states. She assisted Jack in scouring through records of different courthouses as well as finding the headstones of multiple generations of their early American relatives in various obscure cemeteries. They did numerous sight-seeing trips. They visited the Tennessee-Missouri areas, the Smoky Mountains, the Washington D.C. area, the New England states, the Rocky Mountain states, the southwest desert states, California, and a cruise to Alaska.

After their vacation traveling phase ended, her true sense of purpose, being the soul-mate of Jack, her husband, was illustrated to everyone who knew them. Well into her eighties, for numerous years, she tirelessly took care of Jack as he suffered the agonizing slow decline of the cruel disease of dementia. Her heart was crushed when he died in 2016. However, her devotion to him continued even after his death. Each and every day for the rest of her life she desperately missed him. In 2017, she suffered a second tragedy when her son, David, died from pancreatic cancer. On the morning of April 26 of 2022, God called her home so that she could reunite in Paradise and spend eternity with her beloved husband, Jack, and her son, David.

Gladys is survived by her youngest sister, Rosalie Vlasta Holtzman; her son, Jack; her daughter-in-laws, Susie and Cindi; her grandchildren, Garrett, Matthew, Paul, and John; and her great-grandchildren, Ian and Ava.