Josephine Kennard

At age 18 Josephine Curl married the love of her life, Ralph Pilmer, who died soon after from injuries received in the South Pacific during WW2. Before her marriage to Ralph, "Jo" as her friends had called her, moved to San Francisco to model. Jo eventually moved back to Iowa and married Gordon Griswold, in March of 1954 and had her daughters, Susan Jantz and Sally Eystad. She is proceeded in death by one daughter, Elizabeth Ann. Jo enjoyed many varied careers Jo founded a modeling agency and took Iowa models to NYC to start careers in the modeling industry. Her models were found in numerous print media as well as television. Jo was the marketing director for Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines, IA, at the time the largest mall in Des Moines. In the mid 1970s she was the sales manager for Sharp Microwave Ovens. She created recipes and did cooking schools across the state of Iowa to teach people how to cook with their new microwaves. In her retirement years she moved full time to Arizona where she bought and remodeled homes in Sun City, AZ Jo will be remembered as being very generous. You never went away from her house with an empty stomach. She was well known for her pies, cinnamon rolls and her peach cobbler. In her heart, Jo loved Jesus. She often told the story of sneaking into church when she was a kid to later in the day preach a similar semon herself from a tree stump at the park. When she was 88 and found herself in the hospital with a stroke on Christmas morning. Jo recited the Christmas story from memory to her family that morning. She will be dearly missed by her daughters, granddaughters, Sara Jantz and Laura Sutton and great grand children, Alexis and Liam Sutton.