Louise was born in Sonora, Texas, on December 7, 1921, to parents Thelma Irene Briscoe Phillips and William Robert Briscoe.
Her amazingly full life can best be described as a fine collection of stories, the kind you return to again and again and keep with you wherever you go.
The kind with some coffee stains on the cover, discolored edges from a dunk in the river, and pages stuck together by lemon pound cake crumbs.
The kind with grocery lists in the margins and phone numbers on the back fly leaf.
The kind with a bluebonnet and a night-blooming jasmine tucked between its pages. The kind with a postcard of Mesa Verde marking the middle of a chapter and a photo of a favorite dog behind the dust jacket.
The kind you treasure in private but are moved to share so her story will continue to make its way in the world.
Some of her stories followed formal patterns—her education at Sonora High School and San Angelo College, her marriage to Wilburn Andrew “Bud” Glasscock.
Some were wildly unstructured—running a 40-section ranch in the wilds of West Texas as a young bride, raising three daughters on an island in a river in the jungles of Mexico as an experienced mother.
Some of her stories were short and joyful—a picnic organized in high school, a late-night barn dance a county away, a journey to the Holy Land.
Some were short and sorrowful—the loss of her infant son Willie and later loss of daughter Bonnie. Some of her stories were long and as richly textured as novels—her love of and constant connection with her daughters Merry and Bobbie Jo, her Colorado adventures and breakfast-for-dinners with granddaughters Ashley and Sally, and her late-in-life delight in great-grandson Will with whom she shared a love of bacon and hot fudge sundaes and watching cartoons in pajamas.
Louise’s life stories came bound with a strong, well-made binding that never broke.
She was a quiet Christian and a long-time member of Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin.
She was fond of blue Lincoln Continentals, chili cook-offs, paperback novels and ancient civilizations.
She knew how to run hurdles, keep the company books and play a mean hand of bridge. She never met a water hose she didn’t like and could make anything grow, especially her roses which were known to stop traffic.
She made a point of immersing herself in the world and seemed to always have a bag packed and ready. She was equally at home on a cruise ship as she was at a roadside park with her yellow Igloo cooler.
She had a keen eye for a good story and relished in incorporating the stories of the people she met and the places she saw into her own narrative just as the people who met her and loved her, some even just briefly, will continue to tell Louise's stories for generations to come.
She spent the final days of her life surrounded by orchids and dove song and the love of her family.
She leaves behind daughters Merry Louise Gibson and Bobbie Jo Glasscock; granddaughters Ashley Lynn Gibson and Sally Trapp together with their husbands Haidar Khazen and Bobby Earl Trapp, Jr.; great-grandson William T. R. Khazen; brother and sister-in-law Harold and JoElla Briscoe; and numerous treasured cousins, nieces and nephews.
If you’d like to honor Louise’s life with a memorial, the family asks that you support your local gardening group or First United Methodist Church, Sonora.
Or simply plant a rose in your own yard. Her favorite was Peace.
