Janice Kaye (Starr) Dolezal

Class of 1958

1958 Maroon SpotlightJanice Starr
Janice Starr

Band 55-56; Annual Staff 55-56; Homeroom Secretary-Treasurer 55-56.

Janice Kaye (Starr) Dolezal

July 18, 1940 – June 3, 2021

Janice Kay Starr Dolezal, 80, passed away June 3, 2021, in Tyler, TX. Born July 18, 1940, she grew up in Perry, Oklahoma, and was a graduate of Perry High School.

She attended airline school in St. Louis and upon graduation was hired by Frontier Airlines in Oklahoma City as a flight attendant. After receiving her one-year pin with Frontier, she married her high school sweetheart, best friend, and the love of her life, Dick, on September 3, 1960. They made their first home together in Pratt, Kansas, before Dick’s career with Halliburton led them to Tripoli, Libya, living there for 12 years before moving to Longview, TX, in 1977 and eventually retiring in Tyler, TX, at their dream home, The Farm, in 2004.

Jan was an incredibly gifted artist and craftswoman who took pleasure in creating and making things beautiful. She loved spending time in her garden, had a passion for genealogy, but most of all loved and took care of her family as our beloved Matriarch, our GeeGee. Her fierce devotion to her husband, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren is something we will carry with us always.

GeeGee truly embodied what it means to be a lady, and tried her best to impart these traits upon her daughters and granddaughters–being kind, generous, respectful, fair, honest, dignified, dependable and a person of your word. We hope to emulate even a fraction of her strength, love, and character.

She is survived by her husband, Richard “Dick” Dolezal; her children, Rebecca Perkins, Angela (Mark) Collins, Julia Martin, and Douglas (Lisa) Dolezal; her grandchildren Seth (Marissa) Kasper, Maren (Jeff) Taylor, Skye Sutton, Courtney Martin, Alexandra (Hayden) Ashcraft, Brooke Perkins, and Brandon Martin; and her great-grandchildren, Tanner Taylor, Cooper and Henley Kasper, Sutton Dolezal, Sylvia Martin, Chloe and Titus Ragan, and Lilliana Ashcraft. She joins in heaven her father, Edmund Arthur Starr; mother, Loreita Smith; stepfather, William T. “Bill” Smith; and her sister, Jerri Pat McCracken, who preceded her.

A private gathering will be held by her family in the coming days.