Sandra Pedicini | Sentinel Staff Writer July 15, 2007

SANFORD - It seemed as though nothing could stop Janise Joseph Woodard.

She raised a daughter while pursuing a college degree, even as her husband was halfway across the globe, serving in Iraq. She graduated with honors and then began pursuing a law degree while pregnant with her second child.

She planned to start a career as a real-estate attorney and raise a large family. She and her husband, Joe, talked of opening a restaurant together.

Janise Woodard and her infant, Josiah, died Tuesday after a plane crashed into homes in their Sanford neighborhood, setting two on fire. Woodard was 24.

Joe Woodard now faces life as a single father, raising 4-year-old daughter Jurnee. She was staying with grandparents when the plane crashed.

To get through, Joe Woodard is counting on the strong Christian faith that his wife strengthened and nurtured within him.

"I know where Janise is at," Woodard, 31, said last week.

Janise Joseph grew up in Orange Park, near Jacksonville. Her father is a merchant marine. His wife, Joseph's stepmother, helped raise Janise.

Friend Shagara Rogers described Joseph as a high achiever who worked two waitressing jobs in her senior year at Orange Park High School. She ran track and was a member of the Anchor Club, a service organization.

Toward the end of her senior year, Rogers said, a change came over her friend -- "she turned really spiritual."

In a biography she had written about herself, Joseph described herself as having become "a new creature in Christ" at age 18.

She moved to Orlando, where she attended the University of Central Florida, getting a degree in legal studies.

"She loved the law," legal-studies professor Kathy Cook said. "When she started talking about the law, her eyes would light up."

While studying at UCF, Joseph met Joe Woodard at a convenience store. He had moved to Orlando from Virginia to live with his sister.

"He called me up and said, 'Sis, I need somewhere to go. I don't have any direction right now," his sister Regina Littles said.

He found that direction in Janise Joseph.

"A lot of things about me changed," Woodard said. "Janise turned me into more of a man." SANFORD - The couple married about a year later, he said, and before long his wife was pregnant with Jurnee. After her birth, Joe Woodard was recalled to the Navy for duty in Iraq.

Janise Woodard continued her studies, with the help of a pastor and his wife who took her in. Fellow students remember her as cheerful and outgoing.

But the grueling pace took its toll. One friend remembered Woodard's tears when the baby was sick and she had a test to take. Sometimes, exhausted by her full load, she would fall asleep in class.

But she studied hard, picked up legal concepts easily and graduated cum laude in 2005. Last year, she started her law program at Florida A&M University in Orlando.

With a friend she had met at UCF, Woodard recently had started a nonprofit corporation called Treasure Anointing Ministries. It formalized the work she had started a few years before, treating troubled girls to a weekend of pampering at luxury hotels. While there, she would give them spiritual guidance and talk about self-esteem.

Woodard paid many of the expenses herself.

"She wanted to teach them that, you know, they were princesses and people should respect them, and to love God," said her friend Natalie Jackson, a local attorney.

She gave lunch bags stuffed with food and Scripture to homeless people begging on the sides of the road. She faithfully tithed 10 percent of her income -- even her scholarship money. She volunteered at the Boys & Girls Club.

Woodard talked about community service in the statement she wrote earlier this year:

"Since God comforted me in all my tribulation, and now I am able to comfort the youth who are in trouble, because of the comfort that I received from God."

Around the end of the summer in 2005, the couple settled in Sanford, near their church, in a new, ethnically diverse subdivision with many young families. They liked The Preserve at Lake Monroe because it was peaceful. They rented at first, then bought a house last year when it came up for sale.

Joe Woodard said he has to be strong for his daughter, whom he describes as a tiny version of her mother.

"If I'm going to . . . start crying, she's going to want to have her mother," he said. "If there's ever a time for me to get weak, this isn't the time."

Woodard funeral information
Saturday, July 21 The House of God 2830 N.W. 27th Ave. Ocala, Fl. 34474 Tel. 352-351-9874

Donation information
Washington Mutual-The Woodard Family Fund (407)831-1742
5/3 Bank- The Woodard Family Fund (407)999-3066