Dorothy Jones Taylor

Dorothy (Dot) Taylor, a well-known and loved citizen of the Jackson community, died unexpectedly of heart failure on January 29, 2017. The family will host visitation at Northminster Baptist Church at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, February 6, prior to a memorial service at 11:00 a.m. at the church. Graveside services will be at 8:45 a.m. that day at Lakewood Memorial Park, with family and close friends attending.

Mrs. Taylor was born in 1927 in Jackson. Her parents were the late Walter Hines Jones and Mattie D. Jones Clifton of Jackson and Smith County. She grew up in many Mississippi towns, including Jackson, Hazlehurst, and Raleigh. A lifelong curious and avid student, she graduated at 18 from Millsaps College.

At the end of World War II she married her college sweetheart, Zach Taylor, Jr., with whom she created a beautiful partnership of 60 years until his death in 2006. She thrived on family activities, community involvement, education, and church activities.

An active member of the Junior League, she was on the steering committee for the Mississippi Arts Festival, volunteered over 30 years with the United Way and was on its board, was local president and a national board member of Goodwill Industries Volunteer Services, was the Director of the Millsaps Arts and Lecture Series, and was the president of the PTA at Power Elementary, Bailey Junior High, and Murrah High School.

She was involved almost daily in church activities, teaching Sunday School and leading Girls’ Auxiliary at Woodland Hills Baptist Church when her children were young. Later, she was an active member of Northminster Baptist Church, where she was a deacon, volunteered with the Caregiving Committee and the adopt-a-school program for Spann School, and cooked and delivered Meals on Wheels. She enjoyed her Sunday School class immensely. She loved to be Caregiver of the Week, when she visited church members, found ways to solve problems, made frequent phone calls, and sent thousands of cards.

She also took time for her many friends and was a member of the High Noon Club, the Pleiades Club, and many bridge clubs, sewing groups, and discussion groups, which she delighted in hosting in her home. Her divinity candy was eagerly anticipated by friends at Christmas. Her children’s friends and her younger friends often looked up to her for guidance and saw her as a role model and mentor, often saying, “I want to be Dot when I grow up.”

She had a keen interest in politics and volunteered in the campaigns of many people running for office, including William Winter, Ray Mabus, Kane Ditto, and Cecil Brown. Her contribution to the Ditto campaign was so effective that she was hired at age 62 by the Office of the Mayor of Jackson as Coordinator for the Mayor’s Initiatives for Jackson. In this role, she coordinated initiatives for strengthening the family, neighborhoods, a vision for the city, and economic development. She enjoyed co-chairing the party at the Governor’s Mansion on Ray Mabus’ inauguration day.

She loved to travel, especially on family vacations to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Wrightsville Beach, N.C. With Zach’s family, she travelled across much of the U.S. and also to Russia, Poland, Italy, Canada, and Mexico.

She was profiled in author V.S. Naipaul’s A Turn in the South as someone who had been raised in a small Southern community during the Depression and lived through what she viewed as a revolution in the 1960’s. She told Naipaul of following the guidance she was given by her father, who died when she was thirteen. “You never get ahead by stepping on somebody’s back. We all need to come up together.”

Broad-minded, accepting, gentle, welcoming, independently thinking, and talkative, she had a unique talent for bringing people together to work on activities and events that enriched their lives and the Jackson community. She worked with thousands of people and hundreds of groups. Her presence is deeply missed by those whose lives she has touched.

Her pastor, Chuck Poole, said of her life, “Dot Taylor was one of those rare souls in this world in whom the human spirit and the Holy Spirit are so seamlessly integrated that we can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.”

Mrs. Taylor is survived by her children Patricia Taylor White of Birmingham, Alabama, Zachary Taylor III (Jan) of Jackson, and Walter Taylor of Mahwah, New Jersey; her much-beloved grandchildren Zachary Taylor IV of New York City, Jenny Taylor of Athens, Georgia, and Caroline Taylor of New York City; sister-in-law Mae Taylor Sullivan of Roswell, Georgia and Hattiesburg; nieces and nephews Robert C. Montana (Priscila) of Dallas Texas, Nancy Montana of Canby, Oregon, Charlotte Sullivan McDonnell (Don) of Roswell, Georgia, Marcia Smith of Houston, Texas, Leland Smith III (Priscilla) of Madison, and Barbara Smith Vilutis (Arv) of Houston, Texas; close family friend Doug Mathis of Jackson; and many great nieces and nephews.

Her husband Zach Taylor, Jr., sister Patricia Montana, brothers-in-law Bob Montana, Kirk Taylor, Clayton Sullivan, and Leland Smith, and sister-in-law Janice Taylor Smith preceded her in death.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Northminster Baptist Church, 3955 Ridgewood Rd., Jackson, Ms. 39211; the Mattie D. Clifton Scholarship Fund at the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing, 2500 North State Street, Jackson, Ms. 39216; or Millsaps College, Jackson, Ms. 39210.