William "Joey" Joseph Singleton, Jr.

Comments

Carolyn Oster

Rest in peace, Joey. You are already being missed by many people.

Janine ((jan) Allen Hoover

I grew up with Joey. My condolences and deepest sympathy to you and your family. May God' Bless. .

RICHARD WILLIAMS

Great memories with you and family at the beach! You’ll always be in our memories! God bless!

Ridley and Ida Ross

May God be with you and your family. Rest In Peace , Joey Ridley and Ida

Laurin Morgan

So very sorry for your loss. Joey was definitely one of the good guys. May he Rest In Peace. ?

Robert Purks Sr

Sorry I’ve never met you but thanks for your service. Prayers for the family.

Patricia (Peppo) Harrington

Prayers to your family for comfort at this difficult time. I will especially miss your imitations of “Snuffy” Smith and the drum solo of Wipe Out on your desk in class.. ❤️??

Phyllis Maxwell Parks

I met you in the 5th grade at Averill Elementary when we moved to Texas . You were one of the sweetest boys ever and I am so glad we reconnected on FB. What a joy to know what a great man you turned out to be. I will miss your words of wisdom and encouragement.

Jimmie Nixdorf

Joey was a great guy, and I'm proud to have had him as a friend and colleague. I met him years ago when I attended the police academy, and he was an instructor there. Many of his coworkers described him as a model officer, and I can honestly say I wholeheartedly agree. He was also a man of God, and I appreciated his insights into God's Word. While I was saddened by his passing, I'm also thankful to have known him, and I will never forget him. Keeping his family in thoughts and prayers. RIP, Joey. Thank you for your service! Godspeed!

Larry and Judy McFarland

Will, so sorry about your Dad. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

Keith Cheney

Partnered with Joey for a long time with Joey on the night and became close friends. He wail be remember as a friend, mentor and outstanding police office by many.

Laurie Helmke Jordan

My heartfelt sympathy and prayers to Joey’s family. Rest In Peace.

Lance Tiner

Rest In Peace Joey. You will be greatly missed. You were a cop to the bone. You were an FTO and instructor for most of the time that I worked with you. You influenced and trained many of the officers that are still here. Your legacy will remain for generations to come.

Sandra Womack

Met Joey through my former husband, Jim Riggs. Always a nice guy to be around. RIP Joey. Prayers for your family, blood & blue.

Stephanie Henry Langford

Joey helped me stay connected to my late husband, David Henry's, close colleagues and friends after he passed in 2018. It was a crucial part of my grief and healing process. It helped me through the hardest time of my entire life. Joey was a prince of a man. He is appreciated, respected, loved, and will be missed by me. Rest in peace, my good friend. Find David and hug him for me up there in Heaven.

E. Ray Laminack III

In the everlasting arms. Miss you Cousin, you were always one of my heroes.

Joe Delahoussaye

Been many years and was sad to hear of the loss of one of Beaumont's finest.. RIP my friend and will see you at the big 10-42 above.

Drew Polk

While growing up during summers from 1962 until Joey sold his Beach house since our Cabin was next door Joey and I shared beach life to the max. As noted he was a great Surfer and will always remember his kind nature. RIP Joey.

Druanne McLemore

I consider it an honor to be able to Call Joey my friend! He was always such a warm caring person! From the first I laid eyes on the tall good looking Surfer ! I knew Joey was someone special! I was in heaven when Joey & I were crowned Mr. & Miss Dowling! I was literally walking on clouds!! We know he’s at that beach in the sky…….. “COWABUNGA” my friend!!

Mike, Julie, Jason, Jenna Shell

Will and Stacy, We are so sorry to hear of your Dad’s passing. Joey was a very special person and our lives are changed forever.. A father’s love is a never-ending gift. Your father was so proud of the two of you. You could hear it in his voice when he spoke of you. Our prayers and thoughts are with you and your families today.. May God wrap his loving arms around you and give you peace, love, and comfort today and the days following. Joey was a wonderful man and if someone needed help he was always there to offer a helping hand. Joey will always be remembered also for always bringing out the best in everyone. He went out of his way to help so many people and left a great legacy. Love ❤️ and Prayers !

Mary Munro

RIP Joey

Paige Polk mayeux

When I think of Joey it makes me smile. So very many fun memories. Growing up next door to him on the beach.. building sand forts and having mud ball wars with him and my brother Drew, trying to hang out with them surfing, and my fave just sitting on that front porch with him and his parents, Mary and Joe. Some of My fondest memories of childhood took place right there.. RIP Joey. May your spirit. Soar

Ruthie Dodson

I’m so very sorry to hear of Joey’s passing. What a kind and gentle soul. I worshipped Joey as a I young preteen and he was always so gracious and funny. What a guy! He will be missed.

Mike and Susan Richards

Thank you Joey in your professional and civilian life. You have earned your position at the Gate of Heaven. Rest easy

Jeff Safar

I had the privilege to have rode with Joey on midnights. Thier was never a dull moment in the car. Joey was a good cop he will be missed. Our hearts go out to the Singleton family. Jeff@Sheryl Safar and family.

Kent shaffer

See ya later Joey, rest now we will take it from here, job well done my brother....

Bill Knoble

Joey, this is Bill, your good friend throughout Elementary school and Jr. High. Perhaps we even considered ourselves best friends during most of this time. I’m truly saddened by your passing and I give my heartfelt condolences to your kids, family and Mary Liz. The person who wrote your obituary did an excellent job of it and you’d be very pleased and proud of what they said. From it, I learned many things I didn’t know about you as an adult, but maybe I can fill in a little more of your early childhood as I reminisce about some of the fun, risky and devilish things we did together. If you remember, we met each other at Averill Elementary School in Mrs. Hodge’s 2nd grade class. Our friendship easily continued because I lived just one street over from you. My oldest memory of us doing something together was in Mrs. Hodge’s class when we and one other kid put on a skit in front of everyone, imitating the Three Stooges. We thought we were funny, but you could hear more cricket sounds than laughs. By the 3rd grade our interests turned to girls. Your crush was on Karen K. and mine on Marcel K. (last names omitted to protect the innocent). It was around this time that we also started listening to music. I remember one day I came to your house and you couldn’t wait to play some records for me. Your comment was: “listen to these guys - they sound just like g-i-r-r-r-r-l-s”. Then you played the Four Seasons’ song “Sherry” and a Beach Boys song. I couldn’t believe they were guys either. You did confess that those records belonged to your sister, Mary Liz, even though you were absolutely forbidden to go into her room. Then there were the many Friday nights I spent at your house. You had the "fun" house with carpet throughout, a TV in your room and the attic at the top of the stairs. Oooooo, that attic!! Whenever we wanted to scare ourselves, remember how we’d both take that long walk up the stairs, turn slightly to the right, open the door to a pitch black room full of stuff and then debate whether we wanted to go halfway into the dark to turn on that dim light with a pull chain hanging from the ceiling? Sometimes we thought that it just wouldn’t be worth the risk!! If we did go in, a few minutes later, you’d say: “what was that noise!!” and then we’d bolt for the door, stumbling over the junk and each other, high-tailing it down the stairs, thankful that we were going to live another day to tell about it. Every time we spent Friday nights together, we’d always watch the Twilight Zone, then Outer Limits and look at each other in disbelief of what we just saw. Sometimes we would divide up your army men and set them up behind a wall made from toys and books, then try to bomb each other’s army until they were totally annihilated. Strange thing though - you seemed to always know exactly where I hid my men and just creamed them. Your conscience finally got to you one night when you admitted that you purposely convinced me to take the side that had your closet door mirror behind me. Joey, I don’t know if you even knew this, but you started me collecting stamps. I came over to your house one day and you had gotten a piece of cardboard out of one of your dad’s laundered shirts and had almost filled it up with all of these colorful stamps, lined up in nice, neat rows from top to bottom. I thought that it looked cool, so I went home that day and did the exact same thing and continued collecting stamps for the next 10 years until girls looked more colorful, nicer and neater than the stamps did! Even the outside of your house was a fun playground. You had that lattice-brick courtyard wall covered with ivy that was perfect for hiding behind the day we decided to throw handfuls of acorns at cars passing by. And that narrow alley behind your house made a perfect getaway the day we ran up behind cars and threw Cracker Balls on the pavement as they stopped at your corner stop sign. But we found there was nowhere to hide one day when we advanced to firecrackers and the cops came. They came up so quickly that all we could do was throw the evidence under the closest tree. I think even they had smiles on their faces about that, so they just gave us a warning. Do you remember the day we thought it was time for us to go into business for ourselves, so we opened up a Kool-Aid stand? Business was slow and we had some disagreement about our business plan, so you picked up the pitcher of Kool-Aid and poured it over my head. You were bigger than me, so, I decided to let you slide on that one (heh, heh). Some time after our Kool-Aid venture, we decided to get into the less messy (but actually more dirty), newspaper business. You had just gotten a beginner’s printing set, but it was very tedious being able to print only 2 - 3 words at a time, so we had to stay up literally all night long just to make a few two-page newspapers. We printed “FREE” in the upper right corner of the front page. We pretty much had to give them away because how valuable is a newspaper when our only source for “stories” were scraps of paper we had found on the street and printed the ones we liked based on what they said. I guess the dirt and grime on those scraps wasn’t a concern to us. But with no money coming in and getting no sleep, we felt it was time to shut down our newspaper. How about though, the computer we built as a project for Mrs. Lambert’s 6th grade math class. It was about 4 ft. wide and 3 ft. tall, with a wood frame, some knobs and Christmas tree lights on the front. We used your mini reel-to-reel tape recorder as a motor to scroll paper out of one vertical slot into another slot to appear like it was actually doing something. Maybe Steve Jobs was working on a more sophisticated model in California, but I bet we got a picture of ours in the local newspaper before he did!! I remember us forming a pact one time that we were both going to ask our parents to give us those new styled Sting Ray bikes with the banana seats for Christmas. It worked and I believe yours was bright blue and mine was purple. We were both pretty excited and felt like we had just been handed the keys to a sports car....and so proudly we rode them to Dick Dowling. In Junior High, you and I joined the Cowabunga Surf Club which was an all guys club of mainly novice surfers until we figured out that letting girls come to our meetings might be more fun. This led to you joining the Beaumont Surf Syndicate and putting in a good word for me which helped me become a member. We even got these cool sew-on logo patches with our club name on them and the word “Surf” in the shape of the state of Texas. But by far, the most fun I had with you was at the beach and staying in your parents beach house. The food was great too - always stopping by Shipley’s Donuts on the way down there and your mom’s seafood dinners at night. I loved it then but feel very privileged now that I had that opportunity. The open windows next to where we slept let the night sea breeze flow over our sheets feeling like a gentle massage. Do you remember how you couldn’t stop laughing about the night I was sleepwalking and ended up in your parents bedroom and just stood at the foot of your mother’s bed? She popped up and asked what I wanted and I mumbled something like ‘I don’t know’, so she said: “well, the bathroom is that way”. How about the time we were seining and caught a Catfish. You tried to pick it up and it slipped out of your hand and finned your toe which started bleeding something awful. Your Dad was fun too. He’d let us hang onto his shoulders while he walked us out to the 2nd sand bar because, on the way to it, the water was over our heads. Your mother also gave us some thrills the time she took us fishing around some small bayou and as we were walking through the tall grass to get to the water’s edge, she quickly turned around and yelled: “get out of here, quick - there’s a snake”!! The times we spent on the beach body surfing, catching all kinds of sea life in our seine, digging for those tiny clams trying to find the colorful Mexican ones, building ponds for the minnows we caught, popping inflated Portuguese Man-O-War bodies, poking at jellyfish, looking for seashells - were all just in a day’s fun. And to wind down after spending most of the day on the beach we would walk or drive your 2-seater Go-Cart to that tiny grocery store at the end of your road to buy comic books, RC Colas and Moon Pies. Yeah Joey, I remember lots of things we did as kids. They were pretty tame compared to later adult experiences, but that’s the charm of being a kid - having just simple fun. I’ve always wanted to thank you for a couple of things you did for me by being my friend. Thanks sincerely for giving me my immense love for the beach. No sharks in the water will ever cause it to fade. My very first beach trip as a young boy was with your family. Even as an adult, the beach you introduced me to has given me many, many pleasurable times. Few kids are lucky enough to have a friend with a beach house and parents who would put up with their shenanigans. But most of all Joey - thanks for making my childhood so enjoyable. May you now enjoy your peaceful rest as much as I did being your friend. Bill Knoble

Will Singleton

Thank you for posting this Bill, what good memories ya'll had.

Will Singleton

Thank you Paige, we will always cherish the beach memories we shared with your family.