Jane Wilkerson Yount

Jane Wilkerson Yount died—knowing she was loved. She was born in Nashville, the daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. William Wesley Wilkerson Jr. (Fawn) and the sister of William Wesley Wilkerson III (Bill) and Nancy Fawn Wilkerson Diehl (Joe). Her father was founder of the Middle Tennessee Hearing and Speech Center, now the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, named as a memorial to her brother, Bill, who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. She is survived by her daughters, Lee Louise Yount Wenckebach, Margaret Fawn Yount Polen Reis (Ed), and Pamela Jane Yount White; her grandchildren, Sarah Fawn Salt (Noel), Robert Steven Polen (Jennifer), Elizabeth Hazel Polen, Benjamin Alan White, and Hannah Rose White Herd (Alan); and her great-grandchildren, Anders Wilkerson Salt, Audrey Fawn Salt, Aili Elizabeth Salt, Henry Braxton Polen, and Anastasia Watt Polen. Her husband of 57 years, Thomas Leo Yount Jr., died in 2010.

Jane graduated from Ward-Belmont and attended Pembroke College of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1953 and did graduate work in Hearing and Speech at the University of Pittsburgh after she was married in the fall of 1953. She and her husband lived in Pittsburgh and Nashville for short times and then moved to the interesting city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for 26 years. Jane taught Speech Therapy and was on the Board of the Daniel Arthur Rehabilitation Center. She was on the Board of the Webb School of Knoxville and was in the group of Music Association Women who voted to buy the first violin for Edgar Meyer, who lived there. She was involved in the American Museum of Atomic Energy, forming their needed volunteer program and occasionally giving the children’s lectures on simple genetics: Detached or undetached earlobes? Why did one mouse have straight tail and another curly? Her many varied experiences at the museum broadened her perspectives. The family took exciting trips together, including a meaningful Christmas in Bethlehem where Christmas night they observed shelling from the Golan Heights over the Sea of Tiberias. Next came a fascinating trip to the Galapagos Islands, followed by being caught in a revolution in Peru.

Having returned to Nashville after her daughters were grown, Jane found joy in her family, in First Presbyterian Church, and in the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center. For 46 years she eagerly anticipated attending the Kentucky Derby. For a quarter century, she wrote poems with a message for each holiday throughout the year, sending them to nursing homes and care facilities, to friends and the sad, hurting, or lonely, and to veterans at the VA Hospitals in Tennessee, where for some, her poems were the only mail they received all year. Jane Yount was richly blessed by her a ctivities, her family, and her faith.

Services are at First Presbyterian Church of Nashville on Franklin Pike Saturday 11-23-19. Visitation is from 10 to 11 a.m. at Courtney Hall and the service from 11 to 12 in the sanctuary.

In lieu of flowers or gifts, the family would appreciate donations to the Bill Wilkerson Hearing and Speech Center: https://www.vanderbilthealth.com/billwilkerson/29893