Ranger Exes Memorial - RHS Class of 1949

Joy Harper EARNESTINE JOY HARPER GILBERT, 71, began a new life peacefully at her home on May 7, 2004. It is a new life free of the cancer with which she lived courageously for almost four decades. Burial was at Austin Memorial Park Cemetery. She was born in Ranger, TX on Aug. 21, 1932, to Myrtle Pauline Blankenship (RHS-1928) and Charlie Earnest Harper (RHS-1929). Joy was in the Ranger High School Class of 1949. She worked hard to raise her family and support her children through college. She also worked diligently to assist her husband John's work during his long career in the Methodist ministry and touched the lives of many in the communities in which she lived and served with him, including Ranger, Brady, Shiner, Lockhart, the Rio Grande Valley, Corpus Christi, Victoria and Austin. After her family and the church, her main interests were reading, sewing, quilting, painting and cooking. To be loved by Joy Gilbert was to know unconditional, complete and non-judgmental love. Joy leaves behind her husband, John C. Gilbert, the former Senior Pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Austin; a son, Gib Gilbert and his wife, Debra of New Braunfels; a son, John Gilbert and his wife, Elaine and their children, Clay and Jenna of Dallas; a brother, J.D. Harper (RHS-1953), and wife, Imogene (RHS-1954) of Austin; and a brother, Charles Harper (RHS-1960) and his wife, Joyce (RHS-1954) of New Jersey.