The family gathers around Jeanne Waller Campbell, known affectionately as ‘The Cookie Lady.’
GERMANTOWN — Everyone knew the cookies were always fresh.
Jeanne Waller Campbell baked well into her 10th decade, hands still steady with the rolling pin, and her heart still bent toward service. Residents and staff at the Village at Germantown counted on her for homemade treats and a warm smile. They called her “the cookie lady,” though the nickname hardly captured the fullness of her life — 102 years lived in faithful devotion to Christ, family and the calling to love her neighbors well.
When Campbell died in the early morning hours of June 4, she left behind more than memories of sugar cookies and Sunday school lessons. Among her final acts of stewardship was a $1,000 bequest to the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, a gift that speaks volumes about a woman who understood that faithfulness and generosity can extend into eternity.
Born Nov. 21, 1922, in her family’s home on McNeal Street in Bolivar, Tenn., Jeanne Elizabeth Russell entered a world vastly different from the one she would leave. She witnessed the arrival of electricity and telephone service to her small West Tennessee town.
She lived through the Great Depression and rolled bandages and used rationing coupons during World War II. A proud charter member of VFW Auxiliary Post 2949, she carried the memories of a century’s worth of American life, always ready with stories when encouraged to share them.
Jeanne Waller Campbell, pictured here near her 100th birthday, left a legacy of sugar cookies and Sunday school lessons.
But her faith, not her longevity, defined her. For nearly 85 years in Bolivar, Jeanne served at First Baptist Church with steady devotion — one Sunday school lesson, one jail ministry visit, one homebound meal at a time. She taught children about Jesus, led the Women’s Missionary Union and served on two pastor search committees. She sang in the Golden Sounds choir and played piano at nursing homes. She understood ministry happens wherever people need to hear God loves them.
Her son Burt remembers his mother as someone “deeply concerned about her neighbors and their salvation.” It was the driving force behind the cookies, the music, the teaching and the visiting. Every act of service pointed others toward the Savior she served.
Campbell graduated from Bolivar Central High School in 1940, a starting forward on the girls basketball team that won the West Tennessee championship in an era before state tournaments existed.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in home economics from the University of Tennessee in 1943, became a teacher in Hardeman County Schools and was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, a professional society for women educators. She married Burton Waller, sharing 53 years of marriage before his death, and later married James E. Campbell of Jackson late in life.
Jeanne Waller Campbell attended the WMU’s centennial celebration in 1989.
The Russell and Waller families were close-knit, and Jeanne ensured that bonds remained strong across generations. She taught her extended family about faith, education, proper grammar, table manners and respect for others — not through lectures but through example. She lived what she believed.
She didn’t retire from service when she moved to the Village at Germantown in 2007. She simply found a new neighborhood to love. The cookies kept coming. The concern for others never wavered. At 90, 95 and 100 years old, she remained faithful to the calling that had shaped her entire life.
Her $1,000 bequest to the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board represents something profound about the nature of biblical stewardship. Campbell was not a woman of great wealth.
She lived frugally, carefully, without pretense. She possessed a prosperity that transcended material measures — the richness of a life poured out in service; the abundance of relationships built on genuine care and the wealth of knowing that her resources belonged to God.
She represents countless Southern Baptists whose names will never appear on buildings or in denominational histories, who serve faithfully in small towns and city retirement communities, who teach Sunday school and visit jails and bake cookies and play piano at nursing homes. They don’t serve for recognition. They serve because they love Jesus, and loving Jesus means loving people.
Generosity doesn’t end with death. Campbell’s final gift ensures that the mission work she supported throughout her life will continue after her voice has joined the heavenly chorus.
It’s a last act of faithfulness from a woman who spent 102 years demonstrating what it means to follow Christ with your whole heart, your whole life and even your last earthly resources.
The cookies have stopped coming and the piano is silent, but the legacy of “the cookie lady” endures — in the lives she touched, the students she taught, the neighbors she loved and in the missions her gift will support. Jeanne Waller Campbell lived well and gave well, faithful to the end and beyond.
That’s the kind of prosperity that really matters. B&R
