Mrs. Joan Wren Pipkin

Joan Wren Pipkin, 83, passed away Tuesday, December 5, 2017 from complications of walking Pneumonia. Funeral Services will be held at Chancellor Funeral Home in Florence at 11:00 a.m. Friday, Dec 8, 2017. Visitation will be Thursday evening, Dec 7, from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. Burial will be a Richland City Cemetery. Joan (please pronounce it “Jo Ann”) was born in Cascilla, MS on February 2, 1934, to Lena Louise Meier and Leabert Guy Wren. Her full name was actually Maisie Joan Wren, but she rarely used “Maisie”. Her parents were school teachers/ coaches. She received her early education at elementary schools wherever they taught; Ethel, MS, Noxapater, MS, and Prairie, MS. At the beginning of WWII her father joined the Army Air Corps, later renamed the U. S. Air Force. She attended Tokyo American High School in Tokyo, Japan when there with her family. Her father was stationed there, a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps, in the US Army of occupation after WWII. The family took advantage of the opportunity given them to relocate there, too. While there, she was a cheerleader for the Tokyo American High School sports teams. These teams, there being no other high school teams to compete against, played teams made up of volunteers from the military ranks. When Joan’s family returned to the USA, her father was stationed at two different bases in the New York/ New Jersey area: New Rochelle, NY and Tom’s River NJ. She attended schools in both cities. Next, her father was assigned to the Jackson, MS recruitment area. By that time, He had transferred to the US Air Force and been given the rank of Sergeant. Since Mississippi was their home state, her parents purchased a home in Jackson and Joan finished high school at Jackson Central High School, class of 1951. After high school, Joan enrolled in the nurses’ training school at the Mississippi Baptist Hospital. She finished her nurses’ training graduating in 1954, passed the state boards requirements on her first attempt and received her title of Registered Nurse. She was salutatorian of her graduating class and loved surgical nursing which became her specialty. Joan married Neil Pipkin, a fledgling high school band director just out of college shortly after graduating from nursing school and they made their first home in Prentiss, MS where he was the new instrumental music teacher and band director. In Prentiss, besides becoming the mother of two sons, Joan worked as a surgical nurse at the local hospital and taught classes for LPN candidates. When her husband changed careers in 1962 to take a job with IBM, she devoted herself to raising the family including her only daughter, Annette, who was born nine years after Joan’s second son. She returned to surgical nursing a few years later, working at MBMC and the new Doctors Hospital where she was head surgical nurse for several years. Joan returned to MBMC later on and became a part of the evening-shift staff. For several years, she was supervisor of the evening shift as well as working as a circulating nurse when needed. She was secretary of the MBH- Gilfoy School of Nursing Alumni Association for a number of years and organized their reunion meetings several times. Joan was a member of First Baptist Church of Jackson where she was formally a member of the Sanctuary Choir and still sang in the Reflections Choir until her passing. She was costumer for the yearly Carols By Candlelight production for several years starting out helping Nora Reid and then tackling the whole job mostly by herself after Nora’s death. Joan was preceded in death by her parents; a daughter, Annette Pipkin Davis; and a son, Mark Joseph Pipkin. She is survived by her husband, Neil Lane Pipkin, Sr.; her son, Neil Lane Pipkin, Jr. (Suzanne); beloved son-in-law, Kevin Davis (Stacy), Annette’s husband before her death six years ago; brothers, Leabert G. Wren, Jr. (Debbie) and Donald Meier Wren (Vanessa); grandchildren, Greg Pipkin, Kent Pipkin, Cody Collins, Sean Collins, Jacob Davis, and Emily Davis; great- grandchildren, Liam Pipkin, Sebastian, Pipkin and Kaden Pipkin; and honorary grandchildren, Ryan and Anna Verdecchia. Online guestbook may be signed at www.chancellorfuneralhome.com.