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Shirley Colleen Jones Jeffery passed away on 23 March 2024. She was born 14 June 1925 in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Hilda Edna Gill Jones, born in London, England, and Oswald Stuart Jones, born in Frankfort, Indiana. On 30 December 1942, Shirley met Finis Breckenridge Jeffery, Jr. (“Jeff”), a young Army Air Corps officer who stopped in Seattle en route to Louisiana after a deployment in the Aleutian Islands. Shirley was working as an elevator operator during her Christmas vacation at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle. When she asked if he was “going up,” he quickly made his way into the crowded elevator. She declined his invitation for dinner because of a policy against dating hotel guests but met him for a soda after work. Their conversation lasted three hours, followed by having dinner with her family. The next evening, they celebrated New Year’s Eve together at the Fort Lawton Officer’s Club and Jeff proposed marriage. She accepted and they married a year later on 11 November 1943 a few miles north of Tampa, Florida, where Jeff was stationed at Hillsborough Army Airfield. During her 66 years of marriage, she relocated multiple times. At Waycross Army Air Force Base, Georgia, Shirley and Jeff had their first born, Finis Breckenridge III (“Breck”) in 1944. After Jeff received training in Princeton, New Jersey, in preparation for his assignment in the military occupation of Japan by the Allied Powers, they moved to Monterey, California, where he studied Japanese at a military language school while Shirley prepared herself for his absence overseas. She and family arrived in Japan in June 1946 and lived in Gifu. In July 1947 her second son, Stephen, was born at a military hospital in Osaka. It was in Japan that Shirley and her husband decided to become Christian missionaries. In 1948 they returned to America. The next year Jeff left active duty and the family moved to Dallas, Texas, where Jeff completed seminary studies at Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology and Shirley became the family’s breadwinner. In 1952, anticipating they would return to Japan, the Methodist Board of Missions unexpectedly decided Korea would be their mission field. Shirley and Jeff spent a year studying Korean at Yale University, while living with their sons in Woodmont Milford, Connecticut. At a missionary commissioning service in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, Shirley gave the response for the group of new missionaries, acknowledging their commitment and pastoral responsibilities. Shirley and her family then sailed on the SS President Cleveland from San Francisco, California to Japan. In 1953 they lived at Kwansei Gakuin School near Kobe, where she taught English while her husband began mission work in Seoul, Korea seven weeks after the Korean Conflict ended. Shirley and her two sons joined him in Seoul in June 1954. While there, the family grew with the addition of Leslie in 1961 and David in 1968. Throughout her mission work, Shirley focused on the well-being and spiritual health of women and children. On 12 separate occasions, she escorted orphaned children to new parents in the U.S. After moving from Seoul to Pusan in 1966, she spent 17 years with the Young Women’s Welfare Center helping young women looking for work or fleeing families that could not care for them. Apart from occasional furloughs back to the U.S., she lived in Korea 30 years until her retirement in 1983. After retirement, she served 23 years on the Board of the International Foundation for Ewha Womans University and served eight years on the Board of the Wesley Community Center in South San Antonio. Since 1985, she attended the San Antonio Korean United Methodist Church. Among her many accomplishments, Shirley earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio. During her graduation ceremony attended by her proud family, the audience gave her a standing ovation after the University president congratulated “this 75-year-old great-grandmother who has been working on this degree for over 50 years and has finally accomplished it with honors!” Algebra was her most difficult course, the art courses her easiest and most enjoyable. Similar to her mother, Shirley was a life-long artist. Working primarily in oils, she excelled at portraits, traditional Korean scenes, and the Texas landscape, the latter subjects ranging from bluebonnet fields to horses. She won several awards for her paintings, the most recent being first prize in the oil/acrylic category for the Texas 2016 Art is Ageless Competition. Shirley descended from a long line of early colonists, many of whom were ordained ministers. Among her earliest ancestors to immigrate from England to the New England colonies was George Soule, a passenger on the Mayflower. Notably, several great-grandfathers and great-uncles were early Christian missionaries to native Americans in Massachusetts and Connecticut, including Thomas Mayhew, Sr. (10th great-grandfather) and his son Rev. Thomas Mayhew, Jr. (9th great-uncle) who settled Martha’s Vineyard. Additionally, the Rev. James Fitch (8th great-uncle), the first ordained minister in Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1646, was also a missionary among the Mohegan and Pequot tribes in southeastern Connecticut. Other famous ancestors included Rebecca Blessing Towne Nurse, Mary Towne Estey, and Sarah Town Clayse (9th great-aunts), sisters accused at the Salem witch trials (Rebecca and Mary were hung). One of Shirley’s paternal great-grandfathers was Captain George Lamberton, an early settler of New Haven, Connecticut. His daughter Elizabeth married William Trowbridge from whom descended Mary Ellen Trowbridge, Shirley’s paternal great grandmother. Shirley is predeceased by her husband Jeff, son Stephen Mark Jeffery, grandson Andrew Bryant Jeffery, sister Althea Jones Beck and her son Carrick McLaughlin, brother Stuart Douglas Jones and three of his children. She is survived by her son Breck (Diana), daughter Leslie Alison Eitze (Ron), and son David (Michelle); grandchildren Marva Jeffery Walting (Paul), Jeffrey Craig Ischy (Genevieve), Jill Jeffery Warwick (Chadd), and Skylar Mary Jeffery; great-grandchildren Matthew Walting, Rylan Walting, Bailey Anne Ischy, Adam Trolston Warwick, Matthew Warwick, Sydney Warwick, and Lily Warwick; nephew Malcolm McLaughlin(Jane) and his daughter Calinda, and niece Kate Amoss (Billy) and great-nephews Christopher Amoss and Philip Amoss. Command from Above - A Missionary's Journey is Jeff and Shirley’s autobiography, which contains much more information about her life. Shirley is buried beside her husband Jeff in Mission Park Cemetery, San Antonio, Texas.

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Shirley Jones Jeffery

June 14, 1925 - March 23, 2024