Wanza Joy Walker Broome, 100, died peacefully in her sleep on April 25, 2026 in Madison, MS.

Wanza was born to Bennie and Ella Walker on May 12, 1925 in Auburn, MS, the second of four children. She grew up in Auburn, where she enjoyed country life. She loved to walk barefoot around the farm, helping in the garden and her father’s molasses mill. She attended Mars Hill Baptist Church and was baptized in the Amite River. In 1943 she entered the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. and graduated as an Registered Nurse from Baptist Hospital in 1945. She was living in Baton Rouge working as a public health nurse when she met Charles Larue Broome on a blind date. They married in 1951 at Mars Hill and remained married for 69 years until his death in 2020. They lived briefly in Prentiss, MS, then moved to Birmingham, MI, Shreveport, LA, Baton Rouge, LA, Tuscaloosa, AL, Ft. Worth and Houston, TX and then Greenville, NC. Wanza was supportive and adaptable and while Charlie attended graduate school at LSU and the University of Alabama, she worked as an OB nurse to support the family while he was in graduate school. As Charlie started his teaching career, they moved to Fort Worth TX and then Houston TX. Eventually they settled in Greenville, NC (ECU) where he was Associate Dean and led the MBA program. At ECU, Wanza took on new roles, welcoming new faculty spouses and hostessing social functions for the Business School faculty, their spouses, and for her church.

After retirement, they built a house on Kerr Lake, Va. Wanza enjoyed the quiet lake life. At Kerr Lake, they enjoyed welcoming friends and family to visit and spending as much time as possible with their daughter and son-in-law and their two grandchildren, Sam and Ellen.

In 2010, Wanza and Charlie moved from Virginia back to Mississippi, where they lived together at St. Catherine’s Village in Madison. There they enjoyed living closer to their siblings, and to many nieces and nephews from both families.

In her final years in Madison, Wanza was cared for by a team of caregivers who loved her and whom she loved. The family will be eternally grateful for their care.

Wanza was kind and happy. She was a nurturer of plants and people. Wanza loved to garden and cook and to sew, knit, and embroider. She enjoyed sharing her garden produce with family and neighbors. But most of all, Wanza liked people. She had a bright spirit and loved to laugh - she made other people feel at ease. One of her important legacies is how much she loved and enjoyed her grandchildren and taught them important life skills, by lesson and by example.

She is preceded in death by her husband, Charles; parents; sister, Kay Brewer; and her son-in-law, James Warden Early. She is survived by her daughter, Belinda Broome Early; her grandchildren Samuel McPhail Early and Ellen Early Landers, and her husband Dustin; her great grandsons, Odin Charles Landers, and Griffin James Landers. She is also survived by her sister Lynrose Lymberis, and brother Jimmy Walker, and his wife Anne, and by multiple generations of nieces and nephews.

When her daughter Belinda was a teenager and trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life, she got a lot of advice. The advice from her mother that she still values to this day: “Be happy.”

She will be forever loved, remembered, and missed.

A service will be held on Saturday, June 6 at Wright and Ferguson Funeral Home in Flowood, MS. The family will welcome visitors from 9-11 a.m. The service will be held at 11 a.m., with lunch for family and friends afterwards. A brief graveside service will be later that day at 4 p.m. at Mars Hill Baptist Church in Summit, MS.

For anyone wishing to contribute to a charity in her name, please consider Save the Children.