Mrs. Jean Ward, the epitome of a Southern woman, has traveled the world over her lifetime, is a mother of four children, nine grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. And she said one of her greatest joys is being a grandmother and great grandmother.
“I just enjoy them. It’s so good to drop in and out to see you, keeps you company,” she said.
She always took a contemporary view on motherhood and even took trips to New York City for many years on Mother’s Day.
“I was a travel agent and I took 50 women to New York on Mother’s Day weekend,” she said. “They told me when I decided to do that no one would go because it was Mother’s Day and I got 50 women to go!”
Jean was married to Henry O. Ward for over 50 years, who served as the Chairman of the Hall County Board of Commissions and Mayor of Gainesville. During that time she had many memorable experiences that included introducing President Lyndon B. Johnson to a crowd of 50,000 people in Gainesville and spending the day with him.
Recently we caught up with Mrs. Ward to find out a little more about her interests and love for the area.
Question: How long were you a travel agent and where would you like to visit again?
Answer: “I was a travel agent for 10 years and got to travel all over the world, it was a great experience. Then I went into business for myself with some other women and worked about eight years, that was called B & B Travel in Oakwood,” she said.
“They were all good and all different. I loved going to Egypt, that was a really interesting one and I traveled all over Europe and Russia. I went to Russia when it was communist the first time and I when I went the second time it wasn’t communist. I went to Sweden and we took a train over to Russia, a night train, and they have different railroad tracks. When you get to the Russian track they have to change the wheels on the train and I found out they did that because they were so close to each other and they weren’t always friendly; to protect themselves they had different tracks,” Mrs. Ward said. “I enjoyed going to Europe, I went on a train through Germany and all the different country; I would love to do that again. I’d love to go back to London.”
Q: What was is like to introduce President Lyndon B. Johnson to Gainesville?
A: “This was when my husband was Mayor and President Johnson planned a trip here for a day when they were starting the Urban Renewal program and they picked Gainesville to start in. We spent the day with him that day. He flew in, he brought one of his daughters with him. My son, Tharpe (Ward) was a little boy at the time and we had a dog that Tharpe was giving food to and the dog jumped and bit his lip, and then one of my husband’s brother’s twin boys had hit him in the eye; so when the President came he looked terrible, his mouth was swollen and his eye was black! The President looked at him and said, ‘What happened to you?!” But that was quite a day, they had a huge turnout and he gave his speech, of course, my husband got up and gave a speech; he always liked to get up in front of a crowd to make a speech.
Q: What is your favorite part of living in Gainesville?
A: “I grew up in Chicopee, in the mill village, my daddy was head of the Chicopee Mill and I lived there until I was married. I like Gainesville because it’s small, well it was, and everybody was friendly, used to everyone knew each other. Of course, my husband was in the funeral business and he knew everybody, and who they were kin to,” she said. “It is a good place for children to grow up in. I will say this, our children grew up on Springdale Road, which is right near City Park, and at that time we had 80 children on the upper part of the street, that’s when everybody had at least three or four children, and it was such a great place for them to grow up because they all knew each other and as Tharpe says, ‘His doctor, his lawyer and his banker lived on that street.’ It was just a great place to turn the children loose and they could go through the woods down to Sherwood (Plaza), Gainesville was a great place to live.”
The Faces of Hall County is a project to showcase the amazing people that live in our community. If you would like to nominate an interesting person to be featured please email babernathy@gonorton.com.
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