Mattie Pearl Jones

Mattie Pearl Jones, 82, of Woodbridge, Virginia passed away on Saturday, March 28, 2020 with her family by her side.

Born in Huntington West Virginia, she was the fifth (and last) child of Elbert and Mattie Lee Jones. She graduated from Douglass High School in 1957 and received a BA in Education from Marshall University in 1961. After graduation Mattie moved to Toledo, Ohio where she became an elementary school teacher. She taught elementary, middle and high School level English, social studies and career and technical education classes in the Toledo Public Schools for 30 years. In 1993 she retired from teaching and moved to Prince William County Virginia to help care for her first grandson.

If you didn’t know Mattie as a teacher, you probably heard her playing the piano or organ at some point. As a child, she was taught how to play the piano and discovered she was a gifted student. From that one year of lessons, she began playing for the church, musical groups in town and elsewhere. In her forties she learned how to play the organ and started playing for Braden United Methodist church services and the Clarence Smith Community Choir (CSCC). CSCC performed for many special events in Toledo and many people were sad to see Mattie move. She played the piano and organ for First Mount Zion Baptist Church in Dumfries for twenty years. She first started working with the Women’s choir, then began to play for the Mass Choir as well as the Vacation Bible School for many years in the summer.

Mattie is survived by many loved ones: her daughters, Leslie and Janine Jones; her sons-in-law, William Bimber and David Atkinson; five grandchildren in Texas, Washington and Pennsylvania; her sister Ella Mae in Colorado; and her many nieces and nephews, friends, and fellow alumni around the United States.

A memorial service will be held in the fall.

If you would like to celebrate the life of Mattie P. Jones, her family requests that you make a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association.