Sunrise: September 13, 1924 Sunset: September 20, 2018 Mother Gertrude McGee Jackson Valley Harvest Church Introduction In God’s Time! Ninety-four Years have come and gone from September to September… 13th 1924 to 20th 2018. And there was Gertrude… Beautiful Gertrude as people both old and young would so often would say.
Born Viola Gertrude, endearingly nicknamed “Took”, to Malachi & Carrie McGee in Winchester, Arkansas; she was the middle of six sisters and had two brothers. Gertrude was a very hard worker and a Sophisticated Country Girl! She was restless on her family’s Arkansas country farm and had day dreams of the city and the finer things in life.
In the mid-forties she left Arkansas and followed her sister Marnetta to Oakland, California. There her work life started almost immediately as a “Bomb Girl” on a bomb plant assembly line, and then in the plant’s cafeteria as a waitress. Then there was Walter… Her Significant Other/Husband of 55 years!
She met Walter Henry Jackson, Sr. the love of her life in Oakland in 1946. Together they migrated south to Merced, California in the San Joaquin Valley where Walter started a career in road work on the 99 Freeway, then just beginning. That work eventually took them to Fresno where they married and raised a family.
Gertrude was a loving, devoted wife, mother and Domestic Engineer! We must give her that honorary title because of the standards she set and kept as such. The bar was set very high, and it was apparent in her household… in her “Everything”!
She resided in Fresno with her husband Walter until he preceded her in death on June 3rd, 2001. After which time in 2008, Gertrude moved back to Merced following her beloved Valley Harvest Church, seeded and planted in Merced on March 17th, 2002 by her daughter & Son-in-Law Pastor & Mrs. Robert A. Morris. In Merced, Gertrude resided with her daughter Betty from September 2008 until her Home Going this past September 20th, exactly one week after her 94th birthday.
Gertrude was preceded in death by her husband Walter H. Jackson, Sr.; father and mother Malachi & Carrie McGee; two brothers John Westly & Fred McGee; five sisters Ethel Mae McGee, Fannie Lee Swygert, Marnetta Corbin, Beatrice Ring gold & Henrietta Garner; sons Silas Randolph and Walter H. Jackson II and grandson Kim Anthony Jackson. She leaves behind her children Gloria J. Morris (Robert), Joe Ane Jackson, James Edward Jackson, Sr. (Barbara) and Betty Jewel Jackson-Yilma; Grandchildren Jerry Wayne & Judy Randolph; Monica Oatez, Walter III & La Shawn Jackson; Terezza Tate, James Jr & Ryan Jackson; Nancy & Spencer Williams; Kiros & Mekdes Yilma; Amanda, Agil & Rebecca Morris, and a host of great grandchildren, nieces & nephews and her Valley Harvest Church family. In lieu of flowers send donations to center for HOPe & restoration VHC -elderly & frail support program.
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