Wilma Joye McConnell, phone company operator, dispatcher

When her father, James Joye, died in 1972 at a relative's home in Columbia, S.C., Wilma Joye McConnell wanted to make sure that he had not taken all the family memories with him.

So she, her brothers, and her sisters, all five of them, decided to hold an annual Labor Day weekend reunion for their extended family.

It began that year "on my Uncle Joe's farm, a pretty big tobacco farm in Clayton, N.C.," Mrs. McConnell's son Mike said.

In recent years, it had moved to the Garner (N.C.) Country Club, attracting more than 50 people from as far away as Maine and Texas.

And though the big Sunday event is always a Carolina hog roast over an open pit, Mike McConnell said, on Saturdays "she brought a little bit of the North to the South."

Every year, he said, "she made hoagies for everybody" - the Italian kind, stuffed with lunch meats.

On Monday, Aug. 3, Wilma Joye McConnell, 84, a former telephone company dispatcher in Burlington City, died at Samaritan Healthcare & Hospice in Mount Holly after suffering a stroke at the Masonic Home of New Jersey in Burlington Township, where she had lived for the last three years.

Born in Hemingway, S.C., Mrs. McConnell graduated from Dreher High School in Columbia and worked as a telephone operator there from the late 1940s.

"She really enjoyed speaking with people," her son said. "She just had a way of instantly communicating."

After she and Wilbur McConnell married in 1953, they moved to Burlington, where she continued as a Bell phone operator, her son said.

By the time she retired in the 1980s, she was dispatching phone-repair personnel to homes and businesses.

She was an officer in her local of the Communications Workers of America union.

Linda McCardell, a longtime friend of the McConnell family, recalled that "as a child, I knew she was pretty special because she worked full-time outside the home, was still active in church, and still had meals on the table every night."

When McCardell went with the McConnells to the Jersey Shore, "I would hear stories about her relatives at the tobacco farm" and their reunions.

"It was such a neat idea," McCardell said.

Mrs. McConnell was a member of Broad Street United Methodist Church in Burlington, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Red Hatters.

Besides her husband and son, she is survived by sons Jim and Joseph; a daughter, Donna Walsh; a brother; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

A visitation was set from 9 to 11 a.m. Friday, Aug. 7, at the Masonic Home of New Jersey, 902 Jacksonville Rd., Burlington, N.J., 08016, before a life celebration there at 11. A graveside service will follow at Odd Fellows Cemetery, Burlington.

Donations may be sent to the Masonic Charity Foundation at the Masonic Home address above.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.pagefuneralhome.com.

610-313-8134@WNaedele