Tillie McKown Pearce Ling was born in Greenville, Mississippi on November 26, 1926. She was the twelfth child of her father, Tilden H. McKown and the fourth child of her mother, Fannie Dunn McKown. Mr. McKown’s first wife died as a result of the Influenza epidemic of 1918 in Soddy, TN.
Tillie was educated in the Mississippi schools and came to Chattanooga in 1945. She began her career with the Provident L & A Insurance Company and would remain faithful to the only job she would ever have for 35 years until retirement in 1982.
Her first husband Frank A. Pearce died in 2000 and she went on to marry again in 2004 to John E. Ling until his passing on May 8, 2013.
Tillie is survived by her special niece, Charlotte Brown; stepdaughter, Martha Ling Jones; stepson, James E. Ling; step grandsons, Christopher Jones and Bryan Jones; step great-grandsons, Jonathan Jones and Lucian Jones; Godchild Jan Travis Coatney and “almost daughter,” Kathy Childress Lockhart.
A Celebration of Life service will be held in the Fall with day and time not yet determined.
Arrangements entrusted to the Valley View Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home,
