Jessie Melba Courtney

COURTNEY

Jessie Melba (Fowler) Courtney, 97, died Wednesday, May 24, 2017, at the Brookfield Home Care Center in Rocklin, California.
She was born October 30, 1919, in Blair, Oklahoma to E. R. Fowler and Mary Lou (O'Dell) Fowler. Jessie grew up in southwest Kiowa County, attending school and graduating from high school in the Con-8 Community. She attended Cameron College in Lawton, Oklahoma, before transferring to Southwest Oklahoma State College in Weatherford, Oklahoma, where she graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in English Education in 1942. Following graduation Jessie married her college sweetheart, Joseph Jennings Courtney, in Cordell, Oklahoma on June 14, 1942. Mr. Courtney had graduated from Oklahoma A&M in 1941 and accepted a position with the DuPont Company in Illinois. The newlyweds returned to Illinois to begin their married life together.
Mr. Courtney thereafter was assigned to the super-secret Manhattan Project, participating in the earliest stages of nuclear fission research at the University of Chicago which led to the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. Mr. Courtney continued to work with the DuPont Company within the Manhattan Project throughout World War II, transferring with DuPont to the Hanford Atomic Works near Richland, Washington in 1943 to assist in the production of plutonium for the atomic bomb which was the second atomic bomb employed in the war and was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, effectively ending World War II. After the war, he was invited back to Hanford to work for the General Electric Company which had assumed the government contract for the production of plutonium from DuPont. Mr. and Mrs. Courtney remained with GE in the Hanford area and raised their three children there.
The family moved to San Jose, California, in 1964 where Mr. Courtney continued his employment with General Electric. The family moved again to North Carolina with GE in 1968, before he was called back to San Jose in 1971. Mr. Courtney retired in 1980.
Jessie was a wonderful mother and faithful wife for 63 years. She was a gentle, boundlessly sweet-natured, patient and loving mother, always happy and encouraging to her children.
Mrs. Courtney is survived by a daughter Karen Jo Lane, Rocklin, California; two sons, Matthew Fowler (and Kathy) Courtney of Con-8, Oklahoma; Joseph W. Courtney of Maysville, Oklahoma, six grandchildren, two great grandchildren, and numerous friends and extended family members. She was preceded in death by her husband, Joseph, her mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. E.R. Fowler; three sisters, Ruth L Jackson, Ruby McCollum, Hazel Bynum; one brother, Sherman Fowler, all of the Roosevelt and Con-8 communities; as well as numerous aunts, and uncles and extended Fowler family members.