Grace Lucille Estel

November 19, 1924 - October 6, 2018

Grace Lucille Estel, 93, of Asheville, NC, passed away at 2:30 a.m. Saturday (Oct. 6, 2018) at Brooks-Howell Home in Asheville. A retired deaconess and missionary with the United Methodist Church, she was born Nov. 19, 1924, on a farm in Garrison, Pa., a daughter of the late Albert Ray and Nannie May Taylor Estel. She attended a one-room school in southwest Pennsylvania, which contained all eight grades. After high school she graduated from Fairmont (WV) Business College, then was employed by Jones Fur Company and Allegheny Power in Fairmont. She was asked by her minister to attend Temperance Youth Camp at Camp Caesar in West Virginia. On her return home, she was involved in a nearly fatal automobile accident. “Thanks to the prayers of many, Jesus Christ saved me from death,” she said. Formal education includes Waynesburg (Pa.) College, National College and West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, WV. Her first assignment was with the 22-church Clearfield Group Ministry, then to Jamestown, NY, as an educational assistant. She was also assigned to the one-church Chequamegon Parish on the Bad River Reservation in Washburn, Wisconsin. She was commissioned as a deaconess in the United Methodist Church on Jan. 18, 1956, at Buck Hills Falls in Pennsylvania by Bishop Arthur Moore and was consecrated in May 1957 by Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam. She was encouraged to enter rural work, “and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” she said. Following the Chequamegon Parish, she was assigned to the Parish of the Headwaters in New Hampshire, then to Eastern Connecticut Cooperative Ministries, in Moosup, where she was also president of Killingly Council of Churches. Her last assignment was at Tyrand Cooperative Ministries in Mill Creek, WV. While there, she started a Church Women United group and continued as president for some time. She was also president of Wesleyan District United Methodist Women. She came to Brooks-Howell Home on Sept. 23, 2004. She was a member of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Asheville. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by a brother, Kenneth Estel; her sister, Norma Jean Estel Wilson on Jan. 19, 2013, and brother-in-law, Aubrey Benjiman Wilson, on Aug. 30, 2007. She was the last surviving member of her immediate family. She is survived by a nephew and his wife, Allen and Debbie Wilson of Fairmont, WV; a niece and her husband, Carol Jean Wilson and Alfred Mulzet of San Jose, Calif.; three great-nieces, Laura Ross and husband Peter, and Jennifer Wilson, all of North Carolina, and Sarah Jean Mulzet of California; and a great-great-niece, Lilah, and a great-great-nephew, Ryan, both of North Carolina. Miss Estel chose cremation as her manner of disposition. A celebration of her life was held for family and friends at Brooks-Howell Home, 266 Merrimon Ave., Asheville, NC. She will be interred in the rose garden at Brooks-Howell.