Global Ministries is saddened to learn of the death of Jean Nilson.

Jean Ellen Boniface Nilson, born July 18, 1933, in Morristown, New Jersey, died peacefully on September 20, 2024, at Echo Lake Senior Living community in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Jean grew up in Chatham, New Jersey where she lived with her parents John Berkley Boniface and Frances Ventres Clark and three sisters. Jean graduated from Chatham High School in 1951 and graduated from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana in 1955 with a degree in English, minor in Spanish, and a zeal to serve.

Upon graduation, through the United Church Board for World Ministries (a predecessor mission body to Global Ministries), she taught for three years at the Uskudar American Academy for girls in Istanbul, Turkey. Immediately on arrival in Istanbul, she joined the church choir at the Dutch Chapel where she met the love of her life, Paul H. Nilson. They married in June of 1956 and had three sons. She took a hiatus from teaching while raising the three boys, but could not keep away from it for long, and started teaching part time at the YWCA in Istanbul. Jean also volunteered with a group of Turkish women who knit heavy wool socks in the style and patterns of the women’s home villages. She helped to find markets for these crafts in the United States, giving these women a source of income and a measure of independence.

Jean loved the church. She grew up in Stanley Congregational Church where she sang in youth and adult choirs, and when she moved back to Chatham later in life, she again joined Stanley singing in the choir and attending study group. Outside of church she volunteered for the League of Women Voters, Habitat for Humanity, and the Environmental Commission where she helped establish the recycling service in Chatham.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to Morris Habitat for Humanity (morrishabitat.org).