LIVING HISTORY
She still loved him.
But on that visit before his death, given his failing health,
she agreed to the divorce and headed back to North Carolina.
The divorce and marriage never happened. Three days
later, a Sunday, Jo Ann received a call from Diane notifying
her that TL had just died of an apparent heart attack.
When TL’s death is announced two days later in The News-
Tribune, the obituary lists Diane as his first survivor with her
three children and then “his wife, Jo Ann R. Sloan and their
children, Kathy Blanton and Debra Ann Sloan, all of Franklin,
N.C.; and his son, William Thomas Sloan of Knoxville.’’
Jo Ann, Debra and Kathy make their way back to Fort Pierce
for the service at Yates Funeral Home and later a gathering at
Diane’s home. Once a family with the deepest of roots in Fort
Pierce, they no longer have any ties with TL and with their
property gone, they return to their lives in North Carolina.
JO ANN’S LAST YEARS
After more than a quarter century of living at the Tellico
farmhouse, Jo Ann, in the late 1990s, makes the move to a
rented doublewide manufactured home in Franklin.
About two years later, Debra hears of a new manufactured
home community being developed west of town. She buys
the second lot in the development, setting up her mother in
the home.
“It was a good place for her,’’ Debra says. “She fixed it up,
and it was easy for her to get into town.’’
But that domestic tranquility would only last until 2015.
With Jo Ann’s only source of income a $770 Social Security
check, Debra had to subsidize her mother’s expenses. “I was
supporting two houses on a state employee’s salary,’’ says
Debra, who works for the North Carolina Department of
Agriculture and Consumer Services. “I couldn’t do it.’’
Debra says she was forced to sell her mother’s home at a
$30,000 loss and move her into the Grandview Manor Care
Center nursing home in Franklin. As always, her mother’s
reaction was stoic, emotionless. She had lost her parents at an
early age. In adulthood, she had lost her beloved Cow Creek
Ranch, her ancestral home, her prized Tellico, and ultimately
her husband to infidelity and death, so why would her reaction
be any different?
“At that point she just flowed with it,’’ Debra says. “I said,
‘Mother, I don’t want to do this’ and she said, ‘Well, we have
to. There aren’t any other choices.’ ”
At the nursing home, Jo Ann shares a room with another
patient. Debra says Jo Ann got into a group of friends who
would play poker and do jigsaw puzzles. “She was kind of
social, which was unusual for her, but she was put in a position
that she had to be.’’
She’d also receive visits from her ever-growing family.
Kathy’s four daughters whom she helped raise at Tellico
would produce 10 great-grandchildren for Jo Ann. In turn,
the great-grandchildren produced eight great-great-grandchildren.
44
The Frank and Annie Lou Raulerson line once
at risk of extinction, with Jo Ann the only survivor, was
now flourishing.
During her visits with her mother, Debra says she would
take her out to eat or go shopping or to stop at a site where
they frequently saw bald eagles. The outings became less
frequent when Jo Ann began using a wheelchair about 2018.
Debra says Jo Ann never complained about the past or expressed
any regrets.
But Debra had a lot of regrets about her mother. She
wished she could put her in a better facility with her own
room. Her mother, she says, deserved better. “There were a
lot of things that she lived through that she shouldn’t have
had to live through.’’
Debra blames TL for what her mother endured and still
harbors resentment toward her father, something she is trying
to work through.
“If I had to sum up Jo Ann, I’d say that she was a woman
who was put in most situations that most people would not
have been able to deal with well and she dealt with them like
a lady,’’ Debra says. “She didn’t complain. I think if I were in
her position and I knew what was going on I would have left
TL and wouldn’t have given him a dime. But she took it all in
stride. I think she just kind of learned from Mother Lou and
Granddad that you just have to suck it up.’’
In December 2020, Jo Ann was failing rapidly. The COVID
19 pandemic made visiting her mother difficult. Debra
didn’t think her mother would make it until Christmas, so
she asked a nurse’s aide with whom she had grown close to
call her when the end was near.
“I told her, ‘I don’t want my Mother to die alone, will
you please call me?’ ” Debra recalls. “She called me about
3 o’clock in the morning on Dec. 20 and she said, ‘Debra,
you need to get here now.’ I made it in there in record time.
Mother was in a coma and I just held her and told her that
her body was worn out and people were waiting for her on
the other side. I was encouraging her to let go. I told her we’d
be OK.’’
Jo Ann Raulerson Sloan, 90, died about 9:30 that morning.
The obituary in the local paper wrote about her “graceful
exit” and began: “Jo Ann Raulerson Sloan was a lady, and a
lady always knows when it’s time to leave.’’
IN THE NEXT ISSUE:
THE CONCLUSION
Cow Creek Chronicles writer Gregory Enns
shares his journey in reporting the series and
visits Cow Creek and Tellico while also catching
up with descendants of the Cow Creek cowboys.
HEAR THE
COW CREEK CHRONICLES
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