Jane Wittichen Williams

Jane Wittichen Williams died peacefully just after midnight Sunday July 13, 2025. She was 94.

In the 1930's, the Memphis City School System attempted to make left-handers right-handed. Jane's mother, Mary, thought otherwise, and enrolled her daughter in Miss Lee's School of Childhood. Jane graduated from Central High School. After graduation she attended Christian College where she studied for an Associate of Arts degree. She graduated from Rhodes College (Southwestern at Memphis) in 1952.

She married Ernest Williams III in 1953, and they moved to Nashville while he completed Vanderbilt Law School.

Jane was an artist! Starting in high school she would take the bus to the Memphis College of Art, then downtown on Adams Street. She returned to the Memphis College of Art at the age of 50 and received her MFA in painting. Her paintings are in the collections of First Horizon, FedEx, Atrium Corp., Auto Zone, Schering Plough, Boyle Investments, University of Memphis, Airport Urban Art Commission and Heiskell, Donelson. She was represented by Albers Gallery and her paintings are in the private collections of many.

Jane was a camper, and later, a counselor at Camp Lake Lure in North Carolina where she spent many happy summers. Jane loved gardening, sewing, traveling and riding horses. She was proud to have helped train Ginger, a Tennessee Walking Horse. Many happy days were spent at the family farm in Longtown, Tennessee.

She, her husband Ernest, and their children were active members of Second Presbyterian Church. She was a member of P.E.O. International, Le Bonheur Travel Study Club and the Ikebana Society.

Jane is predeceased by her parents Florian Otto and Mary Bownlee Wittichen and her husband Ernest Williams III. She is survived by her brother Buddy Wittichen (Neida), her sister-in-law Billie Anne Williams and her three left-handed children Ernie (Lisa), Kay and Tom, and her great grandchildren Shannon Frazier (Brendan), Hunter Williams, Sky Williams (Madison), and five great grandchildren. She is also survived by her friend of many years, Berenice Madlock.

Many grateful thanks to the caring staff at the Allen Morgan Center of Trezevant Manor.

The family requests any memorials be made to The Neighborhood Christian Center in Memphis or www.innov8africa.org.