Jennie Renzo

Jennie Renzo May 9, 1924 – September 16, 2019 Jennie Renzo, 95 of Wilson passed away Monday.  Her funeral service will be conducted at 7 p.m. Thursday at Joyner’s Funeral Home, Wilson.  A graveside service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in Stantonsbug Town Cemetery, Stantonsburg.  The Rev. Tony Moore and Rev. John Mark Horrell will officiate. The family will receive friends Thursday afternoon from 5:30 – 7 p.m. at Joyner’s Funeral Home, 4100 Raleigh Road Parkway, Wilson. Jennie met Ralph when she was seventeen years old.  He was a Marine, stationed at New River, which was Camp Lejeune and he was thumbing from Stantonsburg to Wilson.  She “flirted” with him. Mrs. Barnette, Jennie’s mother, invited Ralph to their home and he would visit on the weekends.  Ralph went to her eighteenth birthday party.  The war started on December 7, 1941 and Ralph left but kept in touch with Jennie while he was overseas.  When he returned home, they got married on May 8, 1945, one day before she turned twenty-one.  They were married for forty-seven years.  Jennie worked at Sears, Shirt Factory and Roses.  She was a member of Wilson First Pentecostal Holiness Church for fifty-seven years, where she was the President of the Women’s Auxiliary for four years, where they put the first carpet in the church.  Jennie sang in the church choir for many years and with a quartet for eighteen years at two nursing homes in Wilson. She loved her church family very much and thankful to have been a part of it. Jennie started singing as a little girl with her mother, sister and brother. Jennie is survived by her daughters, Patricia Pridgen and husband, Ronnie and Deborah Robbins and husband, Glenn; grandchildren, Frank Pridgen and wife, Regina, Lisa Pridgen Collier, Lindsay Wells and Paul Wells and wife, Jamie; seven great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband, Ralph Renzo; parents, Capaias and Martha Taylor Barnette and four siblings.  Memorials may be made to First Pentecostal Holiness Church, 2000 Ruann Drive SW, Wilson, North Carolina 27893. Condolences may be directed to Joyner’s Funeral Home at www.joyners.net.