Diane Carlton Jones

Diane Carlton Jones, 94, of Abilene, Texas, passed away on May 30, 2024, in Abilene.

A Celebration of Life ceremony will be held at Buffalo Gap Cemetery in Buffalo Gap, Texas on Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 11:00 am. She will be buried beside her late husband, Bennie Ray Jones.

Diane was born in Hamlin, Texas, to Arthur Buren and Mary Alice Carlton on March 24, 1930. She grew up on the family’s farm in Nienda, Texas, and graduated from high school in Hamlin, Texas. Diane graduated from McMurry College in Abilene in 1948.

She married her husband Bennie Ray Jones on June 3, 1948, in Hamlin, Texas, and became a homemaker and a mother to their four children. While the last two children were young, Diane became an elementary school teacher at St. John’s Episcopal School in Abilene, where she taught kindergarten and first grade for 25 years.

After she retired from teaching, Diane became a sales consultant for Carlisle clothing. She sold the company’s high-end women’s clothing lines out of her home and worked with many of her close friends.

Diane is preceded in death by her parents and her older sister, Rosemary Carlton Adams. Bennie Jones, her loving husband of 62 years, died in 2010.

Diane is survived by her four children: Mark and wife Deborah of Hockley, David and his wife Janet of Taylor, Julie and her husband Donny of Tuscola and John Stephen of Dallas; her sister Linda Carlton Barnett of Abilene, ten grandchildren and three great-grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews.

We would like to give special thanks to Hendrick Hospice and all of the nurses and caregivers at Wisteria Place who cared for her the past seven years.

Memorials may be given to McMurry University or St. Paul United Methodist Church.