Majorie Jean Taliaferro

On New Year's Day, January 1, 1924, Love delivered the gift of a third child to the late Gabriel E. and Lydia Griselda Williams Taliaferro, and they named her Marjorie Jean. After 100 years, seven months of living her life, to the glory of her God Love, Marjorie Jean Taliaferro responded to being called on July 31, 2024, to come to the place of her origin in the beauty and light of Love where her soul is now with her God.

 Pre-deceased family includes two beloved sisters, Barbara J. Taliaferro, and Katherine T. Wood, (Harry); five beloved brothers: Donald (Evelyn), Gabriel (Clara, Jacqueline), Marvin (Elizabeth), Waverly Millie), Dexter (Adele)Taliaferro, and two nephews, Linwood Taliaferro, (Sounjanette), Raleigh, NC, and Richard Taliaferro, Atlanta, Ga.

Jean is survived by one loving sister, Lydia G. Taliaferro, Lynchburg: and one loving brother, Clayton, Lynchburg, and New York City. Also left to mourn are a nephew, Marvin E. Taliaferro (Lorraine) Pittsburgh, Pa.; a niece, Karen Morelli (Dominic) Magnolia, Delaware; a devoted cousin L. H. Franklin (Carolyn) Lynchburg; and grandnieces, grandnephews, and loving friends in her extended family.

At an early age, Jean became a member of the Rivermont Baptist Church Sunday School and subsequently was baptized in October 1936. Jean always found much joy and comfort in musical praise to God, especially through the soul-stirring old-fashioned hymns of the church, which were the inspiration that led her to become a member of the Rivermont Baptist Church Senior Choir in 1958. She faithfully served the choir for forty-three years, reluctantly resigning as its president in April 2002 due to failing health. Jean also served as member and an officer of the Women's Chorus, the Pastor's Aid Club and was Chairman of the Program Committee for Women's Day for fifteen years. "Mother of Church," Jean Taliaferro, loved her church and church family, and truly enjoyed the fellowship of the Believers.

Despite the extant and pervasive darkness entrenched upon some people in the society into which Jean was born, during what was an even "meaner, more harshly insidious time," she, at a young age, and in an enlightening moment, discovered she had an innate ability for translating all the existing inherently rendered social cruelty into positives that promoted kindness and goodness among all her fellow humans. She attributed having that early realization to living within her family circle's power of ambient love, and considered it to have been, in the natural order of things, a proven antidote in countering the forced imbalance visited upon some citizens in our greater society of peoples. This was one of the ways in which Jean's uses of the past so well served her living present.

Jean Taliaferro was a 1941 graduate of the venerable Dunbar High School where she excelled as a high school student, and who loved going to school from the very first day spent in first grade at Armstrong Elementary School. High school curricular offerings comprised of world literatures were her favorites, as was the singular course in the then so-called 'Negro' History. She enjoyed creating ways of making up for the rules of the educational system's forced dearth of content in classroom offerings, during that time, and, especially for that course, she used her at-home library resources in researching vast amounts of historicity of events, some of which were not yet allowed in print, but had ben lived and survived by her parents and forebears. This process was helpful to her in finding answers to her myriad questions not reciprocated upon at her inequitably supplied segregated school, but she persevered. Her attraction to books on all subjects continued to deepen and widen throughout the rest of her life, up until her so loved words suddenly began to lose meaning; no longer easily articulated, or translatable; traitorous of expressivity, gross amounts of incongruities, contextual sense gone, mounting confusion yet continuing to flow from "still - her beautiful mind," from where love continued to pour.

A fast-learning efficiency expert, Jean self-trained during the early 1950s to become Business Manager of the A. L. Braxton Transfer Company, located then in the extremely active for both business and pleasure upper blocks of Lynchburg's 5th Street. She was for some years a part of the interconnectedness and inclusivity that existed within a commonality that made the famed "5th Street" memorial-worthy of its history. In1978 Jean was invited by the storeowner of the iconic Jackson's Drug Stores, located on Main Street, and on Memorial Avenue to come on board as the assistant to the owner. Very soon after being hired, Jean became the store's Assistant Director and Office Manager, positions in which she opportunely could work together with other store employees, as well as serve a large cross section of the local populace. After 30 years in its employ, Jean Taliaferro retired from Jackson's Drug Store, choosing to continue residing here in the Hill City among family and close friends in the embrace of the eastern foothills of the scenically beautiful Blue Ridges.

The family wishes to extend heartfelt thanks to the Aides and medical professionals in the East Wing at the Lynchburg Health and Rehabilitation Center for their caring work with/for Jean, during her lengthy stay at the Center. Also, thanks to the Nayar Hospice for their assistance.

A funeral service for Marjorie Jean Taliaferro will be held at the Rivermont Baptist Church, in Lynchburg on Sunday, August 4, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. Interment will be in the Forest Hill Burial Park.

In lieu of flowers, consider making donations to the Alzheimer Association.

Tharp Funeral Home & Crematory, Lynchburg, is assisting the family.