On May 10, 1943 John Roe married Velma Evelyn SHAFFORD, born December 6, 1913 in Rocky Ford, Colorado. The family later moved to Wenatchee, Washington, where Velma graduated from high school. At Wenatchee High School she was President of the Gold W Club an honorary athletic organization for girls winning letter in athletic sports there. In 1940 she was an inmate in Eastern Washington State Hospital in Spokane.
Velma married John Roe in Seldovia on May 10, 1943. She died two years later, on May 27, 1945 in Seldovia.
Her death certificate lists cause of death as “Encephalitis lethargica”. Encephalitis lethargica is an atypical form of encephalitis, also known as “sleeping sickness” or “sleepy sickness” (distinct from tsetse fly-transmitted sleeping sickness). The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless.Between 1915 and 1926,an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread around the world. Nearly five million people were affected, a third of whom died in the acute stages. Many of those who survived never returned to their pre-existing “aliveness”. They would be conscious and aware – yet not fully awake; they would sit motionless and speechless all day in their chairs, totally lacking energy, impetus, initiative, motive, appetite, affect or desire; they registered what went on about them without active attention, and with profound indifference. They neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life; they were as insubstantial as ghosts, and as passive as zombies.
No recurrence of the epidemic has since been reported, though isolated cases continue to occur.
She is buried in Seldovia City Cemetery, Plot #81.