Jay Wesley "Jay" Worrall Jr.

Jay W. Worrall Jr.

1916 - 2010

Jay Wesley Worrall Jr., died Tuesday, March 16, 2010, at the University of Virginia Medical Center, as a result of a fall near his home. He was 94 years old and had been a resident of Charlottesville and Albemarle County for the past 44 years.

Jay was born in Media, Pennsylvania, and attended Marple High School, where his father was a teacher and principal. He graduated from Haverford College in 1937. During World War II he served in the Army Signal Corps in the United States. He met Carolyn Randal while at Officers Candidate School in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1942. She was a secretary in an office there; her chair was broken and he offered to repair it. They were married in August of that year and remained so for 67 years until his death.

Jay left active duty at the end of the war and worked as marketing manager for a manufacturing company in Reading, Pennsylvania. There he settled with his growing family and joined the Religious Society of Friends at Reading Meeting. He was called back into the military for the Korean War and sent to Asmara, Eritrea, in Africa where there was a small United States Army base. He remained as an active duty officer, serving in the United States and Europe until his retirement in 1966. A contributing factor for his relatively early retirement was his and his family's highly visible participation in the civil rights movement in Petersburg, Virginia, an activity which many of his superior officers were hostile to.

He arrived in Charlottesville that year to work in the United States Community Action Organization Region 10 Office later in 1966. When the office moved to Philadelphia several years later, he decided to remain in the area, first heading the Charlottesville-Albemarle CAO and later founding Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR), an organization dedicated to assisting offenders in local jails to reenter society after their release. Initially established with four offices in Virginia, the organization spread to other states as a model for offender rehabilitation.

Jay Worrall Jr. dedicated his life to civil rights, social justice, peace and other concerns relating to the most disadvantaged in our society. After retiring for a second time as Director of OAR-USA he wrote The Friendly Virginians: America's First Quakers - Iberian Publishing, 1994, regarded as the most comprehensive history of the Quakers in Virginia from colonial to modern times.

In addition to his wife, Carolyn, he is survived by five children, Jay III, James, Emilie Worrall, Sarah O' Reilly, and Laura Tennison; 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren (and counting).

A memorial service will be held at the Tandem Friends School on Tandem Lane, Charlottesville, 1 p.m. Saturday, March 27, 2010.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to OAR, Jefferson Area, 434-296-2441.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.