Irene Jackson Wills

Irene Jackson Wills, the daughter of Granbery and Henriette Jackson, died peacefully with family at Monteagle, Tennessee on May 14, 2022. Born on February 27, 1938, Irene was a lifelong Nashvillian. She attended Robertson Academy, whose building her father designed, and Harpeth Hall, where she was an honor student and made deep friendships she cherished her entire life.

While attending Connecticut College for Women, she studied abroad for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, cultivating a love for the French language as well as an aesthetic sensibility that manifest itself in gardening, flower arranging, architectural preservation, and painting throughout the rest of her life. After graduating in 1960 she briefly considered job opportunities with New York banks or IBM until hearing some fateful words from a distant cousin, Mrs. Edwin Anthony Heard, a successful New York businesswoman from Rome, Georgia. Mrs. Heard told Irene, “Go home to Nashville.”

And go home she did, thinking she might return to New York after joining the Nashville Junior League. Instead, love intervened. After meeting her future husband, Ridley Wills II, at a pre-game Vanderbilt football luncheon at a friend’s home, Irene decided to stick around Nashville after all, finding work with the Methodist Publishing House and later as a French teacher at her alma mater, Harpeth Hall. She and Ridley were married in July 1962.

The Wills had four sons, Ridley III, Jesse, Morgan and Tom. After losing Jesse tragically due to a heart defect in 1968, Irene channeled her grief into resolve that Nashville would have better pediatric specialty care. Toward this end, she served on the founding committee to establish a Chlldren’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and helped lead the effort to move the Junior League Home for Crippled children to Vanderbilt Hospital. For many months before that materialized, Irene drove children from the Crippled Children’s home on White Avenue to Vanderbilt and back. Irene was also treasurer of the Junior League.

In the early 1980s, realizing that Belle Meade Farm was in bad shape physically and on a downward trajectory, Irene joined the board and soon became president. With her husband, Ridley, who succeeded her as president, and other friends on the board, Irene orchestrated a spectacular recovery at Belle Meade, establishing a rotating board, and restoring first the carriage house and then the mansion.

Irene’s love of flowers and of her own beautiful garden on Warner Place encouraged her to join the Garden Club of America’s Nashville Chapter, where she went on to serve as president. In 2004, she received the Zone Preservation Award for the work she had done as a member. Always supportive of Cheekwood, Irene eventually became Swan Ball Chairman. She was proud that Country Music star Loretta Lynn performed at the ball and grateful to her friend, Sarah Cannon (a.k.a., “Minnie Pearl”), for making that happen.

In 1990, with their children mostly grown, Irene and Ridley moved to Meeting of the Waters, the most historic home in Williamson County. Irene served as advisor to her son, Ridley, whose company restored the house built between 1801 and 1810.

A consistency in Irene’s married life was her stalwart support of the Downtown Presbyterian Church. For more than a half century, Irene could be found the first Thursday in November serving waffles at the church’s annual waffle shop.

For every year of her life, Irene spent weeks during the summer session at her home in the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly, where she also established and maintained a garden. She instilled in her husband and sons, a love of Monteagle. Their cottage Resthaven, is filled with paintings done by Irene, her son Tom, and Assembly friends.

Irene was also a member of the Colonial Dames of America, the Centennial Club, and a founding member of the de Tocqueville Society of the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville. Of all her accomplishments, however, Irene was proudest of her three sons.

Irene was preceded in death by her beloved brother, Granbery Jackson Jr, who died in 2021. She is survived by her husband, William Ridley Wills II, her sons, William Ridley Wills III (Betsy), Dr Morgan Jackson Wills (Heather), and Thomas Weaver Wills; and eight grandchildren, Meade, Ridley IV, Isaac, Jessie, Morgan Jr, and Laura. The family is deeply grateful for the accompaniment of attentive caregivers in her last years of life, especially Linda Gilbert, Spencer Thompson and Ashley Stamey.

There will be a graveside service open for all for Irene at Mount Olivet Cemetery at 1 P.M. on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, and a visitation following until 4 P.M. at the Belle Meade Country Club.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Harpeth Hall School, 3801 Hobbs Road, Nashville, TN 37215; The Downtown Presbyterian Church, 154 John Lewis Way North, Nashville, TN 37219; or the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly, P.O.Box 307, Monteagle, TN 37356.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.mountolivet.com for the Wills family.