Jimmy L Brigance

Longtime La Marque resident Jimmy Lee Brigance died peacefully July 20 following a brief illness and a long, productive life. He was 96 years old when Jesus Christ proclaimed Jimmy’s work on earth was finished, escorting him to a new, eternal life above.

Mr. Brigance left small town life in North Texas with his wife and infant son in 1940, became part of Pan American Refining Corp.’s wartime gasoline production effort in Texas City in 1942; purchased a home in La Marque where a second son was born in 1946; joined First Baptist Church the same year where he was a member and deacon emeritus the day he died. In the intervening years Jimmy became a talented artist noted for his “chalk talk” religious presentations and his oil portrait and landscape paintings.

A trained refining engineer, Jimmy and his wife, Nadine, moved to San Francisco in the 1960s where he joined Bechtel Engineering Co. as a contract consultant to worldwide clients. Jimmy and Nadine lived in the desert of Kuwait; near the ice floes drifting past Kenai, Alaska; in the bayou country of Louisiana and amid the refinery business in Indiana. Jimmy later joined Process Operators in Houston from where he traveled throughout the Caribbean, South America, England and Norway where his knowledge of refinery engineering was in demand.

At last, Jimmy and Nadine retired to their La Marque home where Jimmy formed “Jim & Friends”, a music group that entertained once each week at nursing homes in Galveston and Texas City. (In the 1930s Jimmy had played guitar on WRR Radio in Dallas with “Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies”.)

Jimmy was preceded in death by Nadine, his wife of 64 years. Together they are survived by sons Ron, Jimmy Dean and wife Debbie; grandsons Jimmy Dean Jr. and Roger of Austin; Errol and wife Amanda, Sean and wife, Rosa of San Antonio, Marine Capt. Matthew and wife Christy Brigance of North Carolina and nine great-grandchildren.

Funeral services and burial will be at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Forest Park East Funeral Home and Cemetery, 21620 Gulf Freeway, between NASA Road 1 and FM 518 in Webster.