At Random: Jeanette Coody

By Matt Flumerfelt

In some respects, Jeanette Coody said she has had a very sad life. Her mother died when she was just 18 months old.

“I never had the privilege to know my mother,” she said.

She was raised by various relatives, “drug from one place to another,” until her father, Irvin Newbern, married his fourth wife six years later. He was a widower four times over.

After graduating from Pinetta High School, Jeanette married high school sweetheart Howard Coody. Howard was a livestock dealer, a buyer for Armor and Company. Jeanette, Howard and his mother lived together on a 327-acre farm in relative peace and harmony until he was inexplicably murdered. He was found shot to death in his truck alongside the road to Pinetta. The case has never been solved.

At first, police investigators thought she had done it, but she said, “Why would I kill my husband? I didn’t want to be by myself. He was taking care of us.”

She didn’t work, had a full-time maid and did whatever she wanted. For nine months, she

cooperated with investigators. She said the insurance company tried to prove she did it to keep from paying her.

Coody found herself a widow at 39, with no practical skills to help her earn a living. Until that time, she had been “a happy homemaker.” Her mother-in-law, with whom she got along beautifully, died six months after the death of her husband. Earlier in her married life, she had lost the baby from her only pregnancy at six months.

Coody made the decision to attend Perry Business College, where she mastered shorthand and typing. After graduating from PBC, she moved to Valdosta and attended Valdosta Technical College, which was then in its infancy. She said she was in Val-Tech’s very first graduating class in 1963.

She was hired by Levi Strauss & Co. in 1963 to head its Community Involvement Team and remained in that position until the local plant closed on Nov. 1, 1999. She was 77 at the time and still working. She said it didn’t seem like work because she enjoyed it so much. She received the Koshland Award from the home office in San Francisco, which she said is the highest honor a Levi Strauss & Co. employee can receive for community service.

Coody managed the Levi Strauss & Co. Foundation grants in the Valdosta community. It was one such grant that enabled her to start The Haven Battered Women’s Shelter.

The Haven Web site tells it this way: “In December of 1985, two women representing Levi Strauss Foundation approached the senior advocate at the Victim-Witness Assistance Program in the District Attorney’s office and offered to help fund a program which was to include a temporary emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence. Levi Strauss is one of the largest employers in the area. Its philanthropic efforts in the community have played an important role in a variety of local programs and services. Jeanette Coody, of Levi-Strauss, spearheaded the Corporation’s initial commitment and worked for twelve years to support The Haven and to improve local services to battered women and children.”

The Haven is one of many organizations Coody has either aided or helped start during her 46 years in Valdosta. She is president of the Azalea City Women’s Club, and has helped that organization achieve unprecedented distinction among Georgia women’s clubs. She is the only single woman to ever serve as Grand Marshall in the annual Valdosta Christmas parade.

Coody has not let the sad events from her past dictate her attitude toward life.

“I can’t do a thing about the past,” she said. “I live in the present and look forward to the future. I don’t have time to grumble and complain. If you’re my friend and you get to where you grumble and complain, you know what I do? I set you aside and get me another one. I’m not going to be a part of that. Life is too beautiful. Why paint a dark picture?”

Coody loves painting, especially oil painting because “if you make a mistake you just do it over.”

One service she has performed free of charge for more than 40 years is recording the local news for the South Georgia Regional Library Talking Book Center. Every day, she sits down and reads The Valdosta Daily Times into her recorder. She has already worn out several recorders. The tapes are then copied and sent out to approximately 90 patrons in 10 counties daily.

She also loves music and has sung in the First Baptist Church choir for many years. She holds a record of sorts, she said, 69 years of perfect Sunday school attendance. She goes line dancing four times a week at the Valdosta Senior Citizen center and other venues. She has participated in mission trips to Israel and Venezuela, among other places.

She is a professional clown, and has flown in a hot-air balloon. She went to Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on five separate occasions for a week each time and slept on the ground in frigid temperatures to help victims of that disaster.

“Service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy,” she said, repeating a line her father taught her.

Coody describes herself as “a widow by choice,” and says she could have remarried but she’s already had the best and doesn’t want anything less. Besides she’s having too much fun. She tries to stay on the sunny side of life as much as possible while trying to help others who may not have her recipe for happiness.

Another recipe Coody is famous for is her chicken salad, and she doesn’t hesitate to tell what makes hers so good — her homemade sweet pickles. The other key ingredient is that she keeps all the ingredients separate until just before serving to keep everything as fresh as possible.

She doesn’t involve herself in politics.

“I’m not politicaI. My family was but I’m not. I don’t want no part of politics. You have to be dishonest to be in politics.”

Coody will be 86 on Sept. 19. She said she tries to live her life in such a way that when she gets out of bed in the morning, the Devil will say, “Oh no, Jeanette Coody is awake.”

It seems only fitting to conclude a feature on her with one of her own poems:

“Oh! The peace, the gentle peace is ours/as we see God in his creation in colorful flowers/and dust covered creatures scurrying hurriedly through the/embers, butterflies enjoying the nectar, newly discovered./The raindrops, so evenly spread/declare His consciousness of the Earth’s/need of His tender touch, daily./Renewal comes with each sunrise as the Rays tunnel through/the soft mist and gives way to His Presence, that/lifts the Spirit and quiets the Soul, endlessly, willingly,/His Gift.”

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