Mary Edmundson

Mary Graves Edmundson, 81, of Wilson, died peacefully on Wednesday, December 11, 2024.

A Celebration of Life Service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 19, 2024, at First United Methodist Church, 100 Green Street NE, Wilson, with graveside following at Maplewood Cemetery.

Mary was born to Thomas Williams Graves and Virginia Thompson Graves on February 8, 1943 in Wilson. She graduated from Ralph L. Fike High School in 1961 and Salem College in 1965. She married James Joyner (Jimmy) Edmundson on December 18, 1965 and enjoyed one week short of 59 years of happy marriage.

Mary was a dedicated volunteer in the Wilson community. She delivered Meals on Wheels for approximately forty years and was featured in the Wilson Times as a volunteer delivering meals during the COVID crisis. She worked as a loyal volunteer in the Gift Shop at Wilson Memorial Hospital (now Wilson Medical Center) for many years. She also volunteered at the Community Soup Kitchen. She was active in First United Methodist, serving on the Chancel Committee and Flower Committee and especially enjoyed arranging and delivering flowers to those members in the hospital, nursing homes or those homebound. Mary was perfectly content to work in the background, never focusing on herself but always on those around her.

Mary loved her family, her friends, her walking group, a good book, chocolate, competitive tennis, her 1965 Mustang which she never sold, tending flowers in the yard, watching the crops grow at Evansdale Farm, looking for sharks’ teeth at Topsail Beach, picking up starfish on the beach at Hilton Head Island which she thought might be saved by tossing them back into the ocean. If questioned about the impossibility of saving all of them on the beach, she would simply respond that it made a difference to that one. She was right. A lesson in life.

Mary is survived by her husband, James Joyner Edmundson of Wilson; her daughter, Virginia Edmundson Sutton and husband, Jim, of Winston-Salem and her son, James Joyner Edmundson, Jr. and wife, Cabell, of Winston-Salem; grandchildren, James Belk Sutton, Jr., William Edmundson Sutton, Robert Graves (Bo) Sutton, Mary Lowe Edmundson, and James Joyner Edmundson III. She is also survived by her brothers Thomas Williams Graves, Jr. and wife, Sara, of Raleigh and William Thompson Graves and wife, Sally, of Charlotte and sister Nancy Graves Osborne of London, England. Mary is also survived by a host of adoring nieces and nephews, each of whom had their own special and individual relationship with her, and she with them. 

Mary was preceded in death by her parents and by her brother, John Graves II. 

The family would like to express its gratitude to the nurses, aides and staff of Parkwood Village Assisted Living, Wilson Pines Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, and Gentiva Hospice who provided such loving and compassionate care to Mary for the past two years. Angels on earth, all of them.

In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to First United Methodist Church, PO Box 1423, Wilson, NC 27894, or to a charity of your choice.

Arrangements by Wilson Memorial Service, 2811 Fieldstream Dr N, Wilson; (252) 237-7171; www.wilsonmemorialservice.com