2,000 Mourn 3 Killed in Collision With Wrong-Way Motorist

Family and friends wept as three gold-trimmed coffins were rolled before the altar in a Hacienda Heights church where more than 2,000 people gathered Thursday to pay their last respects to three victims killed in a head-on collision with a wrong-way driver.

Four video monitors enabled those in the rear of the church to see and hear eulogies to 70-year-old Joics Stone of Hacienda Heights, his 68-year-old wife, Gene Jolley Stone, and her mother, Ida Moyle Holt, 89, of Long Beach.

Michele Stone, one of the couple’s 12 children, stood before her brothers and sisters and the couple’s 48 grandchildren and asked the family to remember the lessons taught by Joics and Gene Stone.

“We were born of goodly parents,� she said. “It is now our time to live on our own and live as they taught us.�

The three were killed Sunday morning when a wrong-way driver traveling 75 m.p.h. slammed into their car on the southbound Orange Freeway in Anaheim. A toxicology report showed that Jose Asuncion Solis Tenorio, the driver of the other car, had a .42 blood alcohol level, four times the legal limit.

California Highway Patrol officers investigating the crash said that neither car apparently slowed before impact and that Gene Stone may not have seen the other car before the collision.

The Stone family was on its way to Mission Viejo for the blessing of one of Gene and Joics’ grandchildren at the time of the crash, relatives said.

Gerald Wayne Hall, the bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Long Beach where Ida Holt attended services for many years, remembered her as a strong woman who never complained about the aches and pains she suffered in her later years. “She lived with more strength and determination than anyone I’ve ever known,� he said. “She whipped every obstacle that got in her way.�

Joics Stone, a psychology professor at Cal Poly Pomona, was described by his longtime friend Allen Christensen as “a hallmark personality--one of these rare people who comes along infrequently.�

“Joics and Gene Stone touched many people,� Christensen said. “The number of people here are only the tip of the iceberg.�

Clifton Jolley, son of Gene Stone, said, “There was no one funnier or stranger than my mother.� In a eulogy dedicated to her, Clifton Jolley remembered the lessons his mother taught and the humorous ways that she brought up seven daughters and five sons. She and Joics Stone, both widowed with children from earlier marriages, were married in 1960.

“They took upon the task of carrying each other’s children, and they never looked back,� he said.

Gene Stone was president of the California Utah Women’s Assn., a philanthropic organization based in Southern California, as well as head of welfare activities in Southern California for the Morman Church.

Joics Stone taught psychology at Brigham Young University, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He also was a former bishop of the Mormon Church in Canoga Park.

At the church, bowls of M&Ms; were placed in the foyer in memory of Gene Stone, who never failed to greet her many grandchildren with the candy, said her daughter Marilyn Stone Checketts.

Those attending the services did not express anger toward the man police say caused the head-on collision.

“I do not resent the man that killed them,� said Clifton Stone. “I do not resent the accident that took them. It is just another detail in their long and joyful lives.�