Although we sell Christmas trees, the holiday season never begins for me until I receive my first card, which is always from Violet Justice, a precious woman of God.
I met Violet more than a dozen years ago when I helped her husband, the late Rev. Paul Justice, an Iwo Jima and Okinawa Navy veteran and a China Marine, record his stories and publish his book, Transformed by Grace: Delivered from Hell to Heaven. Violet is the epitome of a Christian woman, a kind and gentle lady who loves the Lord.
“Being a registered nurse for many years and a minister’s wife and Sunday school teacher, Violet has a way of making everyone feel loved,” said Mary Astrid-Woodruff, of Centralia. “She treats everyone with the same grace and gentleness.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Violet always dressed in her Sunday best to serve people at church, said Astrid-Woodruff, who described her as “an angel” who walks among us, sharing “her love for people and a willingness to help them, always giving her time and resources.”
Violet was born in July 1937 in Philpot, Kentucky, the youngest of six children. Her mother was in a tuberculosis sanitorium and died at 33 when Violet was 5. Her father and older siblings raised her, and they moved a lot — 20 times in as many years, always within the same three counties.
She graduated in 1955 from Daviess County High School in Owensboro, Kentucky, and enrolled in nurses’ training. She and Paul were engaged two years before they married Aug. 31, 1958, at the Vine Street Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
Paul told me he fell in love the first time he met Violet.
He always introduced her as from Kentucky, “the land of beautiful horses and fast women,” and she always corrected him with laugh, recounting the state’s true motto: the land of beautiful women and fast horses.
They were missionaries who started and pastored churches and raised four children: Paul Scott Justice, Mark Wayne Justice, Jonathan Morris Justice and Hope Marie Free. They had been married 56 years when Paul died on April 10, 2015, at the age of 87. Last year, Violet moved to Las Vegas to live with her son, Jonathan.
She’s truly missed by many in Lewis County.
Centralia’s Anita Williams, who with her husband, Jack, met Violet through Paul and the Marine Corps League, said, “That day we were so blessed to have been given the opportunity to meet such an angel. She’s a caring, loving, best friend, confidante, Christian woman.”
She described Violet as “a fantastic wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister and friend to all she meets.”
“Violet and her late husband, Pastor Paul, were truly representatives of the Greatest Generation,” said Edna Fund, former Lewis County commissioner and Centralia City Council member. “I first met them when Timberland Regional Library was recording WWII histories for the Library of Congress. Soon after we first met, Violet sent us the first Christmas card of the season, which always put a big smile on our faces. At that time she was still working full time at Providence Centralia Hospital. She continued being the first Christmas card we received.”
I also look forward each year to receiving our first Christmas greetings from Violet, a true Christian woman and prayer warrior.
Someday, I want to be just like her.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
