Jenny Sue Clark, 74, left this earth on July 14, 2025, in Dimmitt, Texas.
Jenny was born on September 27, 1950, in McAlester, Oklahoma to Francis Juneve and W.C. “Dub” Wooten. She was the second child born into the family and was exceptionally close to her father.
Her father, Dub, was a top football player who led Amarillo High School to victory at the state championship in 1940. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, Dub continued a career in the sport he loved as a coach.
The family followed Dub as worked as Athletic Director/ Head Coach at McAlester and Blackwell, Oklahoma. By 1956, Jenny and her family were in Gainesville, Texas where Dub was Head Coach for Gainesville High School. While in Gainesville, Dub’s assistant coach was none other than Buddy Ryan, who would go on to gain fame as an NFL coach. Many of Ryan’s famous defensive plays can be attributed to what he learned under Dub. Jenny was proud of her father’s influence on Buddy Ryan and would make sure people knew about it.
By 1959, Dub led the family to Marshall, Texas where he had accepted a position as Head Coach for Marshall High School. There, Jenny began to flourish as an intelligent student with dreams of a life beyond her sleepy East Texas town.
She graduated top of her class in 1969 and attended East Texas State College, now East Texas A&M University. She graduated with honors and was immensely proud of her education, with one of her prized possessions being her school shirt that she kept until her last days.
In 1977, she gave birth to her oldest daughter, Jeneah Lynn, in Abilene. Ever the dreamer, Jenny knew she wanted more out of life and decided to further her education.
She maintained motherhood and her graduate studies at Abilene Christian University until she attained credentials of MS, CCC-SLP, or Speech Language Pathologist. And in that field, she truly left her mark in the world.
Moving back to Arlington, Texas, she worked tirelessly at her chosen career. One remarkable accomplishment was her work to rehabilitate a police officer who had suffered a gunshot wound to the head while in the line of duty. The officer regained his ability to speak and swallow under Jenny’s care.
Jenny used her knowledge of the medical field in her personal life selflessly. She cared for her father throughout his battle with Parkinson’s and was there in his last days. And when her beloved baby brother, Tracey, underwent heart surgery, she was never far from his bedside as he regained his health. She was the rock to her older sister, Eva, and her mother in those turbulent times.
In 1986, She and Jeneah Lynn moved to Beaumont, Texas following her marriage to Warren Clark. From there, the family moved to Amarillo, Texas and welcomed their youngest daughter, Sarah Elisabeth, in 1988.
Ironically, all of Jenny’s expertise in communication disorders would be called upon when Sarah Elisabeth was unexpectedly diagnosed as deaf in 1990. She wasted no time in mustering up her fortitude and using her career connections to immerse her family in both sign language and spoken English.
She teamed up with the controversial visionary Dr. Wanda Milburn to kickstart the Regional Education Program for the Deaf (or REPA). She was fearless in the pursuit of giving her daughter every tool and option she would need for her future--something that her ex-husband, Warren, has remained eternally grateful to her for to this very day.
Jenny’s career continued to grow in Amarillo. She attained the title of department head at Baptist St Anthony and became renowned for her work with stroke patients. She received several accolades from the Texas Speech & Hearing Association over the decades.
In 2000 she left BSA and became a teacher of the graduate program for communication disorders at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas.
While at WTAMU she was a driving force in the creation of WTAMU’s Speech and Hearing Clinic. Students were known to transfer into the Communication Disorders department just to learn from Jenny. Many of the speech therapists and speech language pathologists you will find in the Amarillo area schools and clinics today were taught by the one and only Jenny Sue Clark.
She was also instrumental in the early adoption of hearing tests administered to newborns in Amarillo’s hospitals.
She retired from WTAMU in 2007 but continued to work part time at Early Childhood Intervention and Amarillo Senior Citizen’s Center until 2010.
In her final years of life, she lived in Dimmitt, where she had a close and attentive network of friends who cared for her.
She had a lifelong relationship with God and was a faithful churchgoer. The family is eternally grateful to St. Andrews Episcopal Church as well as the Methodist and Church of Christ congregations of Dimmitt for their steadfast community support of Jenny throughout the decades. Especially sweet, precious Diane Townsend and Sandy Baker along with Mother Jo Roberts Craig--our gratitude is infinite.
She is preceded in death by her parents.
Jenny is survived by two daughters, Jeneah Lynn Abaquin and wife Kristal Payne of Memphis, Tennessee; Sarah Elisabeth Clark; grandson Noel Owen of Amarillo, Texas; brother, Tracy Wooten of Marshall; sister Eva Cry and husband David of Green Valley, Arizona; nephews, Greg and Clint Cry; and many, many friends across the United States and the innumerable lives she touched throughout her career.
The family suggests that donations may be made in her memory to the following organizations: The Callier Center for Communication Disorders in Dallas or the WTAMU Speech and Hearing Clinic in Canyon.