Jessie Lou Ahlf

Jessie Lou Ahlf nee Adams. Born March 5, 1930 in Boulder, IL to parents, John and Lucy Adams. To all friends and most family she was known as Jettie. It was never fully explained as to how this nickname came about but she never really liked Jessie Lou. In true Jettie fashion she went to heaven on her 94th birthday 2024. Jettie divorced in 1959 and from then on she was a role model to her two daughters of a strong, independent, opinionated and feisty mother. In a time when Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best were depicting a family including a Mom and Dad as the perfect, happy household this was when Jettie stood alone and faced the world with determination. It wasn’t an easy time for a single woman with children to take on the world. Jettie worked as a waitress, she managed coin operated laundromats, she was office manager for several cable offices. Jettie was thrifty and saved her money but never let her daughters want for anything. Jettie was known to drink a glass or two of wine every evening. After said glasses of wine you could pretty much expect to hear her ask inappropriate questions of friends and family. She had a special goodbye wave, always told the grandchildren that if they got lost to remember to go to college and watch for the undertow. Jettie could give the stink eye to any driver that she had deemed out of line in their driving. She liked most people and they knew it. The people she didn’t like…we are pretty sure they knew as well. She never left the house without makeup and hair done, even to get her mail. She was beautiful and a powerhouse all packed in a 5’ frame. In the early 1960s Jettie was in a very serious car accident. She had a broken ankle and had to wear a cast with two rods going through the cast and her bones for weeks. At the age of 89 she went to an orthopedic surgeon to have ankle replacement surgery. The doctor told her that he wasn’t sure, the oldest person he had ever done that type of surgery on was 78 years old. Jettie talked him in to doing the surgery. The first thing she told the doctor after surgery was “now I’m the oldest person you have done the surgery on”. Jettie seldom, if ever, dated during the years the girls were growing up. She said it could wait until the girls graduated from high school. Then it could wait until the girls graduated from college. She was proposed to several times in her life and always declined because, by then, she “was set in her ways”. In her later years she moved to Florida full time. This was after her daughters had finished school, gotten married and had children. Jettie is survived by her daughters: Pat England and husband Bob, and Renee Ahlf Corder and husband Greg. Also survived by her five grandsons, Chad and wife Angie, Todd and wife Carrie, Gary, Kyle and wife Jamie and Colin and great grandchildren, Madeline, Emma, Lily, Cash, Madison, Aiden, Norah, her Godson, Antonio, and many nieces and nephews

Jessie Lou Ahlf

March 5, 1930 - March 5, 2024