Joyce: Nine decades strong

A piano player played and sang in the background during a bright morning conversation with Ethel 'Joyce' Curry, the Van Zandt County native, who has resided here in San Marcos for the past 15 years.

As Mother's Day is this Sunday, Curry had much to share about her years in Texas, her family and her career in real estate at a time when women were first making headway in the industry.

She said she came here from Houston in order to be closer to her oldest son, Steve Weldon, who lives in Wimberley and was present during the interview.

On this morning, the lilac of her jacket brought out the color of her rosy cheeks and kind eyes. Several pearl strands were draped elegantly around her neck.

“I like pearls,” Curry said.

Curry said she was born in 1932, at the beginning of the Great Depression, and she was raised on a farm.

She will turn 91 on Sept. 1 of this year.

Last year on her 90th birthday, they threw a party for her at Brookdale Senior Living where she resides.

“We had all the family, and all of the residents here were invited. Well at 90, what can you do but enjoy?” Curry said. “We had two big cakes and my daughter in law said there wasn’t a crumb left.”

She described it as a classy affair. All of the men wore black ties and the women wore pearls.

Curry once worked as a secretary for Mr. Rice, a real estate broker, before she began as a real estate agent herself for the Jim Tucker Company in Houston, a career which she had for seven years.

“My record was nine houses in one week,” Curry said.

She started with the company when they only had seven offices but she said she personally had a hand in expanding the company to 21 offices in the Houston area.

“My first commercial sale was 50 acres in Pasadena,” Curry said.

Curry had one brother and two sisters, but she is the only surviving sibling.

She is the mother of three children, Steve, Debbie and David and she has eight grandchildren, as well.

“I had a wonderful husband,” Curry said. “Both of the boys were named after their daddy.”

Her husband, John Weldon, who passed away at a young 52, had his own brand of success, she said. “He started at a company called Chance Vought which moved from New York to Dallas in 1948. He started with them in the beginning, but he later worked for airlines and was an airline mechanic,” Weldon said.

Her second husband was Tom Curry. She recalled that the family had a fruit tree in their yard and used to do a lot of canning.

“I had a butcher block in the center of my kitchen, and that was my preparation table. I made a lot of jelly,” Curry said.

She is deeply religious and is a Southern Baptist.

“I started teaching Sunday school at 13 years old,” Curry said. She continued teaching it throughout most of her life.

“Mom’s had a strong prayer life, and many people contact her to pray for them and still do today,” her son said. “They know how effective her prayers are.”

Curry and two of her friends started a prayer group that they did at The 700 Club and continued holding for 25 years. She would take the 2 a.m. shift answering phone calls for people in need of prayer.

“We’d get some doozies,” Curry said. The prayer group even went to Israel together to visit the Holy Land.

Curry said she has many hobbies and now enjoys coloring.

“I just started in oils,” Curry said. “I’m doing scenes right now to start out with.”

She was also an athlete. “I started playing softball in high school. I played tennis in high school. I started being a majorette in about the seventh grade, and I continued on through high school,” Curry said. She was also a big Houston Rockets fan, and according to her son, “She knew more about the Rockets than anybody.”

Curry and her mother, Verda Blackwell, later Woolverton, used to enjoy singing gospel music together, and her mother would play the piano.

“My mother started me singing when I was three years old. She would stand me on the piano stool and then, we sang at conventions,” Curry said.

Her mother was a soprano and she was an alto.

“My mother had the most beautiful soprano voice you’ve ever heard,” Curry said.

She also loved to cook and bake. “I had a wonderful family, and I enjoyed cooking for them,” Curry said. “He loved my apple pies,” she said, as she pointed at her son, Steve.

Her three children “loved to eat,” she said.

Cooking was an important tradition in her family when Curry was growing up.

Her mother would entertain on Sunday’s after church, something that she later did herself.