Frances Marie Teleki

Frances Marie Autry Jones Teleki was born at Cuthbert, Texas, the fourth daughter of Barney and Susan Autry. She grew up in a loving family with sisters Viola, Rowena, and Katherine, and brother Jake.

 They lived on a cotton farm and also ran cows and horses. They raised their own food, and Frances was given the task of gathering eggs and feeding the chickens.

 She found a baby possum and raised it until it was big, and a nuisance, rummaging through the house at night. Her parents finally sent it to a zoo in Albuquerque.

The girls were sent to the field to hoe weeds and pick cotton. Their father paid them for the cotton, by weight; they used the money to buy school clothes out of the Sears catalog. Jake learned to drive the tractor before he was twelve. There was no electricity on the farm, but a hand-dug well on the hillside provided water at a faucet in the kitchen. Frances’s mother gathered wood for cooking and washed clothes by hand. Milk was kept cold in specially designed evaporative-cooling buckets, covered by wet cloths. 

 Sadly, in the spring of 1943, Frances’s mother died suddenly, and Frances had to take over her duties at home, because her sisters had left for jobs and marriage.

 After graduating from high school in 1944, Frances decided to go to Sul Ross College. She was a month late, and had only her suitcase, with no sheets for her bed. Her sister, Katherine, helped her financially, but Frances had to quit college several times in order to earn money, graduating in 1950.

 Frances moved to El Paso, where her sister, Katherine, had an apartment and was teaching school. Frances taught briefly, and then worked at a variety of creative jobs, including window decorator, newspaper ad designer, department store ad designer and copywriter, and moving eventually to work in the Advertising and Publicity Department at El Paso Natural Gas Company. Later, Frances moved to Dallas and then Tulsa, Oklahoma, working as a magazine artist and writer, a department store copywriter, and an advertising agency artist.

In 1957, Frances moved back to El Paso and married William Thomas Jones, whom she had met before leaving El Paso. They had four children: William Kyle, Tobin, Karen, and Jonel.  When Jonel was five years old, the family moved to Alaska, seeking better opportunities -- first to Wrangell, Alaska, then to Anchorage, where Frances taught school and Bill worked for Atlantic Richfield Oil Company. When Bill was sent to work on the King Salmon platform in Cook Inlet, the family moved to Kenai, Alaska. There the children finished high school, and Frances took up painting again. Bill retired from Atlantic Richfield in 1984, and the family moved to Fort Davis, Texas, where Bill was born. With no golf course, and unlike the place Bill remembered, the family moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico in 1986.

Frances and Bill started a small print shop in Ruidoso, where Frances set type, designed and drew cards, and Bill managed the shop. Jonel also worked in the print shop. After three years, Frances and Bill sold the print shop and formed a non-profit organization called “People Care”, providing care and homes for people with mental illness. After ten years of operating “People Care”, Bill became gravely ill and passed away in March, 2000; Frances moved to Santa Fe.

For five years, Frances continued her painting, taking classes at Santa Fe Community College. She won several awards for her paintings, and in 2004 attended a workshop in France at Monet’s Gardens where she produced a number of new paintings.

After moving to Rio Rancho to be near her son, Kyle, Frances continued painting. She married Deneb Teleki in 2007, whom she met at Rio Rancho Presbyterian Church. Even though she was from Texas and he was from Hungary, they found many things in common, including both having grown up on farms.

Frances was a lifetime active member of the Presbyterian Church wherever she lived, and served as Session Member in Ruidoso and Deacon in Rio Rancho. 

Frances had a warm, lively, vivid, and empathetic personality; she was strikingly beautiful both inside and out. She took a keen and caring selfless interest in everyone she met, and she seemed to project around herself a kind of low-key aura of cheerful happiness that unobtrusively and modestly won over family members, church congregants, and even total strangers. Her laugh was particularly contagious. All this, together with her artistic eye, love of music, and knack for organization, led her to a lifelong role in managing and organizing family events and family reunions for her extensive clan of near and distant relatives; it also led her to her decades-long active role in church affairs.

Frances passed away on May 24, 2019, from complications of heart disease, which she had battled for ten years. A memorial service was held at Rio Rancho Presbyterian Church on May 28, 2019.  

Frances leaves behind her husband Deneb and four children: Kyle (with wife Tina), Tobin, Karen (with husband Wayne) and Jonel; and three beloved grandchildren: Tony Jones (with wife Danielle), Erika Pauley, and Jake Pauley. She was preceded in death by her first husband, her father, her mother, and her sisters Viola Autry Payne and Rowena Autry Moitoret.

Memorial gifts may be made to Rio Rancho Presbyterian Church, 1004 24th St. SE, Rio Rancho, NM 87124. The family has designated them to go to the church’s asylum seeker ministry.