June Carol Jones Morgan Willis

June Carol Jones Morgan Willis died on April 21 at the age of 100. The daughter of Rosemary Lyons Jones and Isaac Hardeman Jones, she was born September 29, 1924. Although Boston-born and Brooklyn-bred, she became a southern belle at the age of six, when her family moved to her father’s hometown of Macon, Georgia. Along with her younger brothers, Mike and Jerry, she grew up in the midst of a prominent Macon family surrounded and encouraged by a large family including many lawyers and engineers.

At twelve she traveled alone by bus to New York, to visit her beloved Grandpa Mike. She repeated the trip three years later so they could go together to the New York World’s Fair, “The World of Tomorrow.” At seventeen, she and her boyfriend, Sam Morgan, were at the radio station where her mother worked when they heard an alarm from the teletype and went to investigate. What they saw was something like this: “FLASH WASHINGTON — White House says Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.”

After high school graduation the next June, Sam enlisted in the army and went to war, while June went to college, eventually transferring to what was then Georgia State College for Women at Milledgeville, spending her summers working in a munitions factory. In her nineties, she enjoyed attending several reunions of “Rosie Riveters”. After VE Day, Sam came home on leave, expecting to be shipped to the Pacific Theater in a few weeks. They married then, and the war ended while they were on their honeymoon in Jacksonville. Returning to college for her senior year, June still had to live on campus, and the school required that she have her husband’s permission to leave campus to go to the shop where the school newspaper, the Colonnade, was printed. She was the editor while Mary Flannery (O’Connor) was on staff as a cartoonist.

Over the next decade, June and Sam became the parents of four children, first twins, Carole and Janet, followed by Brad, just a little more than a year later, and then after a five-year rest, Rosemary. June always said that raising her children was her greatest joy. They settled in the Atlanta area.

June began working at the Foundation for Visually Handicapped Children in 1962. She remained with the Foundation and its successor agencies for her entire career, eventually serving as director of Social Services at the Center for the Visually Impaired. She was instrumental in the development of the STARS program at the agency, serving her first love, children. She retired in 1989 and remained on the CVI Board of Trustees for another 15 years.

Sam Morgan died in an automobile accident in 1964, and June raised her children alone after that. She married Bob Willis in 1976 and took on the raising of his youngest daughter, Cara, and three of his grandchildren, Robert, Betty, and Rachel. She always said children kept her young and active. She personified the principle of unconditional love, accepting all her children as they were, even as she encouraged them to grow and learn more. Her home was always busy with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and numerous cats and dogs afoot. She enjoyed her rare, spare time in her large vegetable garden behind her house.

June lived for 42 years in Avondale Estates, moving to Athens in 2005. After Bob Willis’s death in 2008, she said she had never before lived alone, but she proceeded to do so for a full decade, enjoying Silver Sneaker classes, her flower garden, Book Club and many new friends. She moved to an assisted living facility at the age of 95. We are grateful for the dedicated staff members at that facility. June remained pleasant, thankful, and loving to all, even as her physical abilities declined.

June’s faith was always of importance to her. She had been a member of the same church since 1952.

June was predeceased by her parents, her brothers, her husbands, daughter Janet Barlow, granddaughters Amanda Holmes and Betty Housman, and stepson Bobby Willis.

She is survived by her children, Carole Holmes (Robb), Brad Morgan (Sue), Rosemary Morgan, and Cara Chestnut; son-in-law Doug Barlow; grandchildren Jen Watkins, Bekah Webb (Chris), Matthew Lightsey (Renata), Lillian Brown (Matt), Tisha Jacobsma (Ryan), Robert Willis (Lisa), and Rachel Roberts (Derek); twelve great-grandchildren; sister-in-law Mary Jones, and numerous nieces and nephews.

We are thankful to Esther Glenn for her loving care each evening for the last three years.

A Celebration of Life will be held Sunday, June 8, at 1:00 p.m., in the Bernstein Funeral Home Chapel. A reception will follow the service at the funeral home.

The Celebration of Life will be live-streamed via Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BernsteinFuneral/

Bernstein Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.