Essie Mae Tucker Coxon

November 29, 1927 - May 21, 2024

May 28, 2024 by Jamie

Last Tuesday, May 21, my Aunt Essie Mae Tucker Coxon passed away peacefully at the age of 96.  She  was the first child born after my father and joined a family with five boys in Laveen, Arizona.  I imagine she was adored and protected by her brothers.  Her sister Imogene followed two years later and they were best of friends.  Essie Mae was probably named after her maternal aunt Essie Mae Stogsdill.  Somewhere I saw that she was baptized in the Baptist Church in Laveen when she was 12.  This seems fitting since I remember her being the most religious of her family.

After graduating high school, she went on her first adventure!  She attended Wayland Baptist College in Plainview, Texas as an out-of-state student.  She lived in Wilis Hall and was a member of the Volunteer Mission Band, the Pan-American Forum, and the Missionary Students Organization.

It appears that she went back to Arizona to attend Arizona State University, living on campus in North Hall and working in the library as a cataloguer.  While there, she was a member of the Religious Council, Future Teachers of America, and Baptist Youth Fellowship. She graduated in 1950 with a B.A. She was the first of her family to graduate from college as far as I know.

She and Theodore Coxon married in 1950.  He was starting his third year at A.S.U. and she was teaching in Mesa public schools. She was the first, and I believe, only of the daughters to have a church wedding.  The other daughters all eloped, mostly because their father didn’t want them dating. They found love anyway.

When I was little, I remember my Aunt Essie Mae and Uncle Ted living in two places.  To this day, I am not sure of the timeline of when they lived where or if they moved between the two places.  I know that they lived in Fontana, California and even remember visiting them there where they had a Siamese cat. The other recollection is more exotic.  They lived on Guam and we (us kids anyway) thought they were missionaries. I don’t want anyone to tell me different because I still envision them helping the islanders.  It was very cool to us for them to live on an island far away.  We always looked forward to their visits to Arizona and to our farm.  My aunt, like her sisters, was a beauty inside and out with the sweetest personality.  When I first saw this photo of her from high school, I thought it was her daughter Sara, who is my age.  We will all miss her very much. We all send much love and many hugs to her daughter Sara.

Ted and Essie Mae Coxon with children from left: Ted, Sara, Kay