Jean Ellen Box

Jean Newton Box, age 98 passed away peacefully on Friday April 26, 2024 at Commonwealth Assisted Living in Oak Ridge, TN.

Mrs. Box and her family have appreciated her longevity and the love and friendship she has experienced from so many persons throughout her life. She has written this obituary herself.

Jean Newton Box was born in Maywood, Illinois, June 13, 1925, to Leon and Viola Newton. He was a locomotive engineer and she was an elementary school teacher. Jean grew up in this western suburb of Chicago in a musical family. At nine she moved from piano to flute, which she played into her nineties.

She graduated from Cornell College in Iowa in 1947 with a major in Sociology and a plan to become a social worker. Her first position after college was in an American Friends Service Committee student program for attendants at the New Jersey Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton. There she met another student who was learning about counseling in mental illness. That was Howard Box who was attending Yale University preparing for the ministry. They kept in touch through their further education and first jobs and married in 1952. She found the position of minister’s wife quite to her liking and saw the opportunity to use her social work skills in their congregations.

 The Unitarian Church in Newburgh, NY, was the first of four congregations Rev. and Mrs. Box lived in. They then moved to the Unitarian Church in Ottawa, Canada. It was an interesting experience to live in another country. Daughter Ruth and son Gordon were both born there and have dual Canadian and American citizenship. Howard was serving their next congregation when Carol was born. It was very similar to the Unitarian denomination: the Society for Ethical Culture in Brooklyn, NY. Through most of her life, Jean had various part-time jobs in social work or positions on boards. And in Brooklyn she and two other members used their musical skills to perform together for their own and other congregations in the NY City area. The last congregation that Howard served was The Unitarian Universalist Church of Oak Ridge, TN, starting in 1976. In this city Jean was in the Community Band, the Symphony Orchestra, played solos and accompanied the church choir. She gave private flute lessons to 150 students in the Music Arts School from 1980 to 2000. Rev. Box retired in 1991. They continued to live active lives in Oak Ridge.

 In 2018 they moved into Commonwealth Senior Living where Howard died in 2021 after 69 years of marriage.

The Boxes are survived by daughter Ruth Westfall of Mahomet, IL, son Gordon Box (Betsy Williams) of Durham, NC, and Carol Box (Alessandro Nicita) in Switzerland and he works for the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva.

Grandchildren are Robert Westfall, and Sofia and Matteo Nicita.

There will be a family memorial service at a later time with burial in the Memorial Garden of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church in Oak Ridge, TN.

To leave a message for Jean’s family or to share a memory, please go to our online guestbook at jacksonfuneralservices.com. Or you may call their office at 865 435 3800 to ask for a family member to get in touch with you.

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