Jean Tyson

Jean Finch Tyson, 94, of Wilson, died Tuesday, March 25, 2025.

Funeral, Friday, 2:00 PM, Wilson Memorial Service followed by visitation. Interment, Evergreen Memorial Park.

Jean grew up in the Evansdale Community of Wilson County. Her parents were Arch and Mary Walston Finch. She joined the Evansdale Methodist Church at 12 years old and married Willard H. Tyson there in 1950. Willard died from heart failure at 54 years old. They had two children, Willard Jr. and Angela Jean Tyson.

Jean attended elementary school in Stantonsburg and graduated high school from Charles L. Coon High School in Wilson. She attended East Carolina College and graduated from Atlantic Christian College in Wilson. She taught school for 26 years in Wilson County.

Willard and Jean joined the Saratoga Christian Church in 1954. She sang in the choir, played the piano there, and taught Sunday School.

Jean always was a positive person. She loved travel, music, reading, and especially her years being involved with the Shoestring Theater, The Playhouse, the Wilson Chorale, and trips with students to Europe, and to New York Broadway plays with her friend Sandie Massengill. Willard and Jean enjoyed trips to the mountains. They enjoyed a camping trip all the way to Niagara Falls and trips with the Wilson County Board of Education when Willard was a board member.

Jean was preceded in death by sisters, Frances F. Bell Crockett and Margaret F. Preslar Slawson, her husband and her parents.

She is survived by son, Willard H. “Will” Tyson, Jr.; and daughter, Angela Jean Tyson.

In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to Saratoga Christian Church, PO Box 395, Saratoga, NC 27873.

Arrangements by Wilson Memorial Service, 2811 Fieldstream Dr. N, Wilson, 237-7171; www.wilsonmemorialservice.com