Mary Frances Wilkins Fenner was a nurse who specialized in caring for children.

Fenner died Sept. 11, 2012. She was 79.

She was born Aug. 23, 1933, in Littleton, N.C., to the late Lottie and McKinley Wilkins. She was educated in the Warren County public school system and graduated from Warren County Training School in 1952. At the age of 12, she was baptized at the Olive Grove Baptist Church.

She graduated from Henryton Nursing School in Baltimore in 1955 with a diploma and spent her early career at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in the infant nursery. From there she went to Philadelphia General Hospital where she spent many years in the outpatient pediatric clinic. She worked as a licensed practical nurse until she retired from Philadelphia General Hospital in 1974.

Upon retiring she returned to North Carolina where she served as a Sunday school teacher at Olive Grove Baptist Church. She would later join the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where her love for children led her to serve as a Sunday school teacher.

During the last year, as she spent weekends with her daughter and son-in-law, she visited the Refuge Evangelical Baptist Church.

She is survived by her daughter, Sheila Corbett (Dolphis); brother, Ulysses Wilkins (Lillian); sisters, Hattie Howard and Elaine Smallwood and other relatives and friends.

Services were held Sept. 15 at Refuge Evangelical Baptist Church, 1100 Oak Lane. Burial was in Chelten Hills Cemetery.

Francis Funeral Home handled the arrangements.