Remembering
Joe and Judy Spears

Dr. Joe Lee Spears and Judith Timmons Spears were companions in life and partners in service to their communities for nearly 50 years. Joe and Judy met while at the University of Kansas and married in 1954 as he was finishing his medical training. After completion of his residency in Kansas City they moved to his hometown of Cabool, Missouri (pop. 2,000) where they set up a private family practice clinic. Their lives there were filled with many activities, including choir at the local Methodist church, golf, flying and raising a family.

These interests and their civic commitment led them to help establish and maintain the Texas County Memorial Hospital where he was Chief of Staff for 20 years, a local nursing home, the civic airport, a local country club, a low-income housing development, and various startup businesses. In addition to raising their children Judy volunteered extensively with the Red Cross, assisting with blood drives and organized free swimming lessons for local children for 20 years. She was active in their children’s scouting organizations and volunteered for many other church and civic activities. When the children were older she continued her education earning a BA degree in business at Drury College (Springfield, Missouri) and became office manager for her husband’s clinic.

After many years as the community’s only physician they were able to attract two other doctors and, after helping establish their practices, felt able to move onto other opportunities. They moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1982 where Joe took a fellowship at the University of Arizona Dept. of Family Practice to help set up rural clinics. A year later he worked for Cigna HMO, helping to establish four Urgent Care centers locally. In 1989 he retired from active practice but continued to work with the Flying Samaritans for many years, establishing several clinics in rural Mexico. Judy took a volunteer position at St. Mary’s Hospital and enjoyed an active golf career; earning top honors in many tournaments and working at many professional matches. They were members of the Catalina Foothills Church and both sang with the choir there as well as with many Arts Express events.

They were blessed with good health and mobility during their retirement years and moved seasonally between Tucson and Florence, Oregon to be near family and pursue their many interests. It was on a trip to Oregon to visit a daughter who had recently beaten cancer that their private plane crashed into a mountain outside of Tonopah, Nevada during an unexpected snowstorm on December 14, 2003.

Three children and spouses survive them: Tim and Louise Spears, Cathy Spillman, and Beth Grossman. They also enjoyed five grandchildren (including one born to Beth several days after the tragic crash and named after Joe). Judy’s two brothers George S. Timmons and Robert K. Timmons, and their extended families, also survive. The countless friends, coworkers, and patients whose lives they touched over the years will also miss them.

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High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Pilot Officer RCAF

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings:

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

 

written in a letter to his parents a few months before his death in a Spitfire on December 11, 1941

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