Joel Karnick
Georgia Ann Alarcon, January 26, 1930 — August 1, 2023
It is with profound sadness we announce Georgia Ann (Boyer) Alarcon passed away on August 1, 2023, at 93 years of age. She is preceded in death by her parents Anna (Kraemer) and Wenceslaus Boyer; all her siblings, Frank, Margaret, James, Helen (Lannigan), Vince and Arthur. She is survived by her husband of 68 years, Alfredo Alarcon; her three sons, Paul from Atlanta, Georgia, John (Kelli) from Nashville, Tennessee, and Richard (Allison) from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi; and her grandchildren, John Hudson, Richard Ferrell, Charlotte Anne, and Olivia Reaves.
Georgia was born to Wenzel and Anna on January 26, 1930, in Fifield, Wisconsin. She reveled in her role as the third oldest, caring for the younger siblings as well as teasing, and bestowing funny nicknames to all of them. Growing up on a farm “Up North” made her physically and mentally strong. She could honestly state she walked miles to school, in the snow, both ways.
Georgia’s faith and desire to learn led her leave to home at age 16 and become a postulant of the Sisters of the Third Order St. Francis on October 4, 1946, in Springfield, Illinois. God’s calling became clearer to her during that time with the Sisters, and she returned to Wisconsin to complete high school in order to pursue nursing. She graduated from Fifield High on May 19, 1949. A review of Georgia’s report cards revealed a highly intelligent woman who was “inclined to mischief.”
With the encouragement of those Franciscan Sisters, Georgia returned to Chicago to enter St. Anne’s Hospital School of Nursing. She completed three years of work and study in Nursing, including additional training in Neuropsychiatric Nursing, at the Hines VA Hospital, graduating in June 1953.
She worked as a registered nurse at St. Anne’s Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, where she met a young doctor from Mexico by the name of Alfredo Alarcon. “Feeling sorry and wishing only to help him with his English,” Georgia and Alfredo eventually married on January 24, 1955. Alfredo’s medical training took them from Chicago to Salt Lake City, back to Chicago and ultimately to Atlanta, with a new child born in each city. With this young family, they finally settled in Atlanta. During these travels, Georgia continued to work as a nurse. Her last position was her passion, neuropsychiatric nursing, at the Peachtree Psychiatric Hospital in Atlanta.
Maintaining a home of four males at various stages of manhood was a challenge to her femininity, but she was always a lady – a strong lady. Accepting there would be no daughter, and the memory of a childhood house fire that took her baby dolls, Georgia found a third calling when she acquired her first antique doll. Like she did with everything, Georgia dove into and exhausted every source of knowledge on dolls, their clothing, the history of the doll makers, the market of collectors – everything. With her passion and drive, that one doll blossomed into a collection of several hundred dolls, and a mastery of every aspect of the antique doll world. She could appraise any doll she was presented with, source antique clothing, sew antique fabric, cobble little shoes, rebuild eyes, repair leather bodies, and take a shattered head, repair and paint it so that not a hairline crack could be seen. All that labor to return a small work of art back to its original state of grace, so that after more than a century, it would be loved again. She made so many lasting friends in the doll world and was a founding member of Peachtree Doll Collectors.
Georgia and Alfredo moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2020. Georgia spent her final years focused on her children and, especially her grandchildren. At their home, Mary Queen of Angels, she found compassion and love in a wonderful, nurturing environment.
A Funeral Mass will be held at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Fifield Tuesday September 24, 2024 at 11:00am. Fr. Shaji Pazhukkathara will officiate.
A visitation will be held at the church on Tuesday from 10:00am until the hour of the service.
Interment will follow at Forest Home Cemetery in Fifield.
Dear Mom, Requiescat in peace.
