Every springtime, just as the tulips were blooming, everybody on Gerry McCoy’s block always marveled at the care with which she tended her garden. Dare to say it, she even may have sparked a touch of neighborly jealousy with her skills.
“Boy, she kept her house immaculate!” said Victor Jackson, her neighbor of 30 years in Eastwick. “She was a wonderful gardener, grew all types of flowers, tulips, daffodils, other types of flowers. You’d see her setting up the flower bed, and she had a guy who was an expert at caring for her hedges.”
Geraldine McCoy, a churchgoing woman who raised two kids mostly on her own, was 70 when she was killed on Jan. 21, 2017, in her home by her own grandson after she yelled at him, police say.
“It’s vicious and very senseless,” Homicide Capt. James Clark told the media after she was murdered.
Gerry worked in the nearby airport in customer service, and she attended First Baptist Church of Sharon Hill, Delaware County. She was an independent woman who lived a mostly private life, but she was always happy to spread a little cheer.
“She was a very nice woman, a very wonderful woman,” Victor said. “She was an excellent neighbor, good for conversation. Another reason I enjoyed speaking with her was because, I knew that most of the time, if we didn’t laugh, it would be a conversation that was constructive, about something that was happening in the news or in the neighborhood.”
Neighbors would pick her brain for tips on how to keep up their own houses, and every once in a while, some of the same plants would start showing up on other people’s lawns.
“My wife and I recently saw her daughter here at the house,” Victor said. “Noticeably, it’s still hitting her pretty hard.”
But he noted that as Christians, they believe that everything happens for a reason, even if you might not understand what the reason is.
“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
To send us more information about Gerry, please contact us at [email protected].
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