Geraldine Elliott Joseph

Geraldine Elliott Joseph, 96, of the Franklin Indiana Masonic Home, formerly a resident of North Vernon, passed away at 11:50 p.m. on Thursday, July 5, 2018, at the Indiana Masonic Home. 

A memorial service will be conducted at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 28, 2018, at Kresge Chapel at the Indiana Masonic Home in Franklin.  Inurnment will follow at 1:30 p.m. at Vernon Cemetery in Vernon, IN.   Arrangements are entrusted to Sawyer-Pickett Funeral & Cremation Service. 

Born September 12, 1921, in Delaware County, OH, Geri was the only daughter of Warner Freeman Elliott and Lois Lorena Hillard Elliott. 

Geri graduated from the Ashley Ohio High School in 1939.  Her sites were set on a college education in social sciences, but it was not possible at the time.  She worked at the milk lab at the Ohio State University Hospital.  She attended Business School and worked for the FBI in Washington, DC to do her bit for the war effort.  She then returned to Columbus, OH and was in the first class of Nurse Cadets Corps.  She became a Registered Nurse in 1948, just in time to work with polio patients for 5 years before Salk’s great vaccine became available.  By this time, she was engaged to be married to a sophomore veterinary student from Commiskey, IN, Max C. Joseph.  They married in 1952 and moved to Hope, IN for three years and then moved when Max took over the veterinary practice in North Vernon.  Geri was interested in any activity that helped the people of North Vernon.  She once said, “I was on so many boards I had splinters.”  She attended First Baptist Church of North Vernon, taught Sunday school, and was a 25 year member of the choir.

Geri is survived by her late husband’s sisters, Charlotte Short and Shirley (Leland) James as well as several nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband; a brother, Homer Eldon Elliott; and a nephew, Stephen Elliott.

Friends and family are invited to light a candle or leave a message of condolence in Mrs. Joseph’s memory at www.sawyerfuneralservice.com.

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