Helen Rouse Jones Pollock

July 28, 1925 - January 8, 2024

Helen Rouse Jones Pollock, 98, of Greenville, NC, died peacefully on January 8, 2023. Born on July 28, 1925, in Lenoir County, she was the youngest child of Bernice Rouse and Minnie Winifred Creech. Helen was a lifelong resident of Eastern North Carolina, with most of her life spent on Airport Road just outside Kinston..

Helen grew up on a farm with her five older siblings and graduated from Grainger High School in 1942. She married Jay Carl Jones, Jr. in 1944, and had two sons, Jay Carl and Bernice. After her husband’s untimely death in 1951, Helen was a 26 years old widow with two young boys to raise. She went to work outside her home.

She worked as secretary to Mr. Jean Booth, superintendent of what was then Kinston Graded Schools. A 1963 yearbook from Grainger High School includes a photo of Helen at work, with the cutline, “She works faithfully to keep Grainger running in proper order.”

She later spent several fall seasons working at Knott’s Tobacco Warehouse in Kinston. She found joy there, spending time with the tobacco farmers she knew her whole life and executing the precision required to keep the books before computers came on the scene.

In 1960, she married Mr. William Edward Pollock. Helen and Ed had 56 happy years together until his passing in 2016.

Helen was a long time member of Queen Street United Methodist Church in Kinston for many decades. She loved to knit and crochet, and her flower gardens were always beautiful. Her cooking was simply the best, and her children and grandchildren still use those recipes and display her handmade Christmas decorations every year.

Many of Helen’s happiest days were spent at the trailer in Salter Path, NC, where she enjoyed the ocean breeze, sipping on a cold Coca Cola, growing tomatoes in her small garden patch, cleaning and cooking the fish that Ed caught, and hosting countless sleepovers with her grandchildren.

Helen and Ed moved to Cypress Glen Retirement Community in Greenville, NC, in 2007. They made many new, wonderful friends and quickly came to enjoy someone else doing the cooking and yard work.

Mrs. Pollock was predeceased by her parents, four brothers and one sister, her first husband, Jay Carl Jones, Jr.; second husband, William Edward Pollock; and her son, Jay Carl Jones III. Survivors include her son, Bernice Jones and daughter-in-law Libby, of Great Barrington, MA; her daughter-in-law, Mary Fletcher Parrott Jones of Kinston, NC; her four grandchildren, Arendall Jones (Karisa) of Marana, AZ; Marian Larson (Eric) of Raleigh, NC; Olivia Ramsey (Jeff) of Brooklyn, NY; and Jackson Jones of New York, NY; seven great-grandchildren; and many extended family and friends.

Arrangements by Smith Funeral Service & Crematory. Online condolences may be expressed at www.smithfcs.com.