A full and well lived life ended with the death of Frances Jackson Turner, age 92, on March 17, 2018.
The youngest child of Bessie Eugenia Davis Jackson and William Maynard Jackson, Frances Marion Jackson was born on January 10, 1926, in East Point, Georgia. She was named for “The Swamp Fox,” Francis Marion, after a half-brother saw the name on the side of a Pullman sleeping rail car. She graduated from Russell High School in East Point in 1943.
She attended Georgia State and worked in the Atlanta area before moving to Washington, DC where she worked for the Department of the Navy and met her husband, Thomas Alexander Turner, Jr., MD, who was an intern at Bethesda Naval Hospital. They would remain married for 48 years until Tom’s death in 2002. They moved to central Florida and Kansas before relocating to Murfreesboro, Tennessee to raise their three sons.
A lifelong political activist, Fran devoted herself to growing the Republican Party in Tennessee and throughout the United States. Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964 would be her first taste of national politics, but it would not be her last. During her life, Fran worked in countless national, state and local Republican campaigns. She was elected to the Tennessee Republican Executive Committee in 1978 and served until 1984. From 1982 to 1983, Fran served as President of the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women and as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Federation of Republican Women.
Fran was part of the “Reagan Revolution” having been a supporter of President Ronald Reagan since, as she put it, “Death Valley Days.” She was an alternate Reagan delegate to the 1976 and 1980 Republican National Conventions and in 1980 served as the Regan-Bush Coordinator for Tennessee’s Fourth Congressional District. In 1984, she served as Tennessee Co-Chairman for Reagan-Bush, was a Reagan delegate and was a member of the Platform Committee at the Republican National Convention.
In addition to her many political accomplishments, Fran was a beloved and devoted wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and aunt. Fran was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, her sons Thomas A. Turner, III and Andrew Stuart Turner, her sister Mary Louise Jackson Lett, and five half-siblings: Dot, MD, Thurman, Edith and Martha. She is survived by her son Davis (Melora), granddaughters Emily and Reed, and two nieces Joye (Frank) Quinn and Celia Lett. Her last few years were greatly enhanced by her caretakers in the Clare Bridge memory care unit at the Brookdale Green Hills Cumberland, who were also her good friends.
A celebration of Fran’s life will be held at West End United Methodist Church at 3 pm, Thursday, March 22, 2018, with visitation beforehand starting at 2 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to West End United Methodist Church, the Alzheimer’s Association or the charity of your choice.
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