Lucy Myrtis Jones

“Well done, good and faithful servant.” — Matthew 25:23

Well Done, Lucy. Well Done.

There are people who pass through this world leaving footprints. And then there are people who pass through this world leaving light. Lucy Myrtis Jones was the second kind.

For 96 years she walked among us — through Depression-era poverty and racial injustice, through the fire of the Civil Rights Movement and the long struggle for human dignity, through love and loss and service and sacrifice — and in all of it, she left behind something that does not diminish with her passing. She left behind light. Permanently. Irreversibly. The kind that changes people and never fully leaves them. Those who knew her best will tell you quietly, with complete             sincerity, that she may not have been entirely of this world.

She may have been an angel on earth.

A Child Born Into History

Lucy Myrtis Brown was born on February 15, 1930, in Cincinnati, Ohio — the firstborn child of Mr. J. Brown and Mrs. Josie Brown, both preceding her in death. She was named after her beloved grandmother, Lucy Hall, as if the family          already understood that this name carried a specific calling and needed to be passed down carefully.

She arrived during the Great Depression — bread lines stretching around Cincinnati city blocks, Black families navigating poverty compounded by brutal racial segregation. The world she was born into told her, in a hundred different ways, that she was less than. She spent 96 years proving otherwise.

A Woman Who Witnessed History

Lucy came of age as America was being remade. She watched the Civil Rights Movement unfold not as a distant observer but as an African American woman navigating a city still drawing color lines around opportunity and dignity. She                    understood precisely what that movement was fighting for — and she cast her vote with the full weight of every woman who had been denied that right before her. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally made that right real for women who looked like her. She never took it for granted.

Her battlefield was not Washington. It was Sunday school classrooms, prison corridors, church mission halls, and national podiums. She marched into the lives of people who needed her and stayed until the work was done.

The Love of Her Life

In 1959, at age twenty-nine, Lucy Myrtis Brown married Mr. Robert Earl Jones — a recently honorably discharged second lieutenant commissioned Air Force officer who had served during the Korean War era and returned to Cincinnati carrying the discipline and dignity of a man who had seen the world and decided this woman was worth everything he had left to give. Lucy led Robert to the church where he later became a devoted Deacon of New Prospect Baptist Church, because like his wife, service was not what he did — it was who he was.

They were married for 64 years. Always faithful. Always building. Always pointing each other toward God. Together they maintained the sacred ritual of dinner on the table at exactly six o’clock every evening — a practice so unbroken across so many decades it became the heartbeat of their household. Robert preceded her in death in September of 2023. She grieved deeply and privately — and then kept going, because the assignment was not finished yet.

Their union produced one son, Robert Torrance Jones, who survives her — her pride, her purpose, and the living proof that everything she poured into a life of service came home every time she looked at her child.

The World Was Their Classroom

Lucy and Robert were world travelers — not tourists passing through, but devoted students of God’s creation. Together they explored most of the United States including Alaska and Hawaii, and traveled abroad to eleven countries including Egypt, Spain, the United Kingdom, Scotland, Fiji, Italy, Nigeria and more — often alongside beloved church members and friends. She walked ancient sands, stood on African soil, and gazed at the Pacific from islands that looked like God showing off. Every mile traveled came back home with her, poured into her teaching, her writing, and her unshakeable faith.

A Woman of Industry and Enterprise

For over thirty years, Lucy served as a data entry supervisor at Shillito’s Department Store — Cincinnati’s first and most storied department store, whose name passed through the decades as Rikes, Lazarus, and ultimately Macy’s. She navigated the specific challenge of a Black professional woman in mid-century corporate America with precision, excellence, and grace — showing up faithfully for three decades because Lucy Jones did not do anything halfway.

Upon retirement, she and her beloved sister Maggie Marshall opened a storefront eatery called The Picnic Basket — ministry with a menu, sisterhood made public, and a place of ice cream, pie, cake and warmth where everyone who walked through the door felt welcome. It was exactly what you would expect from a woman who could not stop feeding people even when she was technically retired.

TEACHER

Before anything else — before wife, mother, leader, or speaker — Lucy Myrtis Jones was a Teacher.

She carried what scripture calls the “Didache” — the divine gift of instruction, the holy ability to take the Word of God and plant it so precisely into the heart of another person that it changes the direction of their life and never leaves. She knew the Bible the way you know the home you grew up in — every room, every corner, every place where the light falls differently in the morning. Children sat at her feet and learned. Adults sat in her presence and were corrected. Prisoners received her letters and were restored. Her mind remained sharp, keen, and luminous all the way to her final days. She was still teaching until the very end.

A Servant Without Equal

Lucy joined New Prospect Baptist Church at a very early age under Reverend Pastor Collins — drawn there in part because her mother Josie was an original member. She served faithfully through the ministry of Reverend Pastor Terry L. Lane and continued under the current leadership of Reverend Damon Lynch III. Pastors came and went. Seasons changed. Decades turned. Sister Lucy Jones remained.

She served in the Deaconess Ministry, among the Matrons, and rose to President of the Mission Department. She managed the New Membership Program with meticulous care — assigning envelope numbers, maintaining records of the living and deceased — because every name represented a life, and every life mattered. She helped found the Prison Ministry, walking those corridors and looking incarcerated men and women in the eye with the message that God was not finished with them. When a leg amputation in 2016 ended her ability to walk those halls, she picked up a pen and wrote letters of encouragement to prisoners across the country until she could no longer hold it.

As a spokesperson at the state and national level and devoted participant in the National Baptist Convention, she carried her voice to podiums across America — speaking to young women with the authority of someone who had lived what she was saying and found it faithful every time. She represented New Prospect and all that it had to offer across the city, state and nation. Women changed direction after hearing her speak. That was not oratory. That was anointing.

The Friend of Everyone

She was kind to everyone she met. Every single person. Without exception. Without condition. She made every person feel like the most important person in the room — because in that moment, to Lucy, they genuinely were. She called people by name and meant it. She prayed for strangers with the same fervor she prayed for family. Her circle of friends was vast,  diverse, and fiercely devoted — children and elders, church members and strangers, the prominent and the forgotten. She accumulated friends the way other people accumulate years — steadily, faithfully, across every season of life.

She did not discriminate in her love. She never learned how.

The Last Day

On February 15, 2026, Lucy Myrtis Jones turned ninety-six years old. Those who loved her gathered. There was celebration, joy, and the golden warmth of a life lived completely and without regret.

On February 16, 2026, following a fall, she closed her eyes.

A ledger was closed. A name was called. Wings — earned across nine decades of faithful service — were placed on the shoulders of a woman who had been waiting for them since before she was born. Robert was there. Standing. Waiting. The way he always waited. Her grandmother Lucy Hall was there. The name had come full circle.

Those Left to Carry the Light

Lucy Myrtis Jones is survived by her devoted son Robert Torrance Jones; a cherished host of Family, Friends and beloved godchildren; and a congregation, community, and nation full of people living better, stronger, and more faithfully because she walked among them.

She was preceded in death by her husband Deacon Robert Earl Jones; her parents Mr. J. Brown and Mrs. Josie Brown; her grandmother Lucy Hall; her siblings Maggie Marshall (Brown), Thelma Brantley (Butts), Velma Peterson (Brown), Melvin Brown, Junious Butts, and Sylvia Butts; and her pastor Reverend Terry L. Lane.

“Strength and dignity are her clothing, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” — Proverbs 31:25-26

Lucy Myrtis Jones February 15, 1930 — February 16, 2026 | Cincinnati, Ohio

Beloved Wife. Devoted Mother. Faithful Servant. Friend to All. Woman of God. TEACHER.

“She may have been an angel on earth.”

Whatever Will We Do Without Our Mothers?

Assignment Complete.

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