Palestine High School Alumni Association

11 / 26 / 1919  –  08 / 01 / 1979

Jack Delbert Roquemore, owner of the Pic N’ Go Food Market at 1009 W. Palestine Ave., died in Anderson County Memorial Hospital at 6:45 a.m. today. He was 59.

Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday in the Bailey Memorial Chapel with the Rev. Joe Routh officiating. Burial will be in New Addition Cemetery.

Mr. Roquemore was born in Palestine on November 26, 1919, a son of Mrs. Ouida Barnes Roquemore and the late A.L. Roquemore.

A member of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Mr. Roquemore was a veteran of World War II, having served with the Armored Corps in the European Theater, where he was awarded two purple hearts. He was a member of Palestine Post 3907 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Mr. Roquemore was an accomplished cartoonist, and his freelance work appeared on the sports pages of the Palestine Herald-Press for several years during the late 1950’s.

He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Nedra Hoyt Roquemore of Palestine; two sons, Larry and Matt Roquemore, both of Tyler; his mother, Mrs. A.L. Roquemore Sr. of Palestine; three brothers, Leroy Roquemore, and Frank Roquemore, both of Palestine, and Fred Roquemore of Houston, and three grandchildren.

The family will receive condolence calls at the Roquemore home on the Rusk Highway.

Pallbearers will be Lamar Muse, H.E. Bennett, Judge Tate McCain, Joe Johnston, Harry Brown, Emmet Pryor, and Paul Elliot.

From a story in the Palestine Herald-Press 9-8-2003 by Bascom Bentley III.

A local boy, Jack’s father owned a machine shop. Like a good son, Jack followed his father into the hard labor of bending and molding metal.

Yet the boy loved to draw and he did it well. There was no college for most in the Depression era and Jack was no exception.

Tom Brokaw was right, Jack and his contemporaries were our greatest generation. There were Americans forged from a joy of rarely getting what you needed and never what you wanted.

First economic chaos and then world war, Jack put aside his pad and pen and went to fight Hitler and his thugs. Serving under Gen. George S. Patton, he would win two Purple Hearts and come home like Ulysses to wander.

Jack would marry Nedra and have two sons, Larry and Matt. A family he loved and supported. Artists are supposed to starve and Jack was no exception.

For the true believer it was the best of times. It was Kern Tips, not Dennis Miller. Men played for the love of the game, not a listing in Fortune 500. It was Doak Walker, not Randy Moss. It was the ilk of Jack Roquemore. So sad, local readers are not apt to see Jack’s like again, never having seen it before

Thank you Jack for the memories.

Source: Palestione Herald Press 08-01-1979