Jacqueline Vivian Evans Cole was the daughter of pioneers and strivers. Her mother, Edith Mae Fulgham Evans, earned a Columbia University nursing degree and served as a nursing administrator at Bird S. Coler Hospital. Jacqueline’s father, Tasco Evertte Evans, was a New York City elevator porter in an era when Black people were breaking through and engaging in the fight for fair work conditions and wages. Before migrating North from Virginia and West Virginia, respectively, Edith Mae and Tasco had already bore witness to the importance of advancing the Black struggle for equality.

Amid that struggle, Edith and Tasco began building a family. They welcomed Jacqueline into the world on October 28, 1944, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Harlem. Four years later, their second daughter, Wilma Denise Evans, was born on November 17, 1948. Tasco died in 1950, leaving Edith Mae to raise two young girls and ensure that they followed their striver parents’ footsteps.

For a time, after Tasco’s death, Jacqueline and Wilma Denise lived in Williamson, West Virginia with their maternal grandparents, Mattie Hicks Fulgham and Herman D. Fulgham, Sr. Decades later, Jacqueline still fondly recalled attending school there, the vibrance of the Fulgham family home, and the joys of playing with her cousins in the rolling hills of West Virginia’s Appalachia region. Though her mother and maternal grandparents were Alabama-born, Jacqueline felt a strong attachment to Williamson, a coal mining town. Her grandfather had helped make history there, where Black miners earned equal pay for equal work and joined White miners to form a union.

Eventually, Jacqueline returned to the care of her mother and stepfather Robert Lee Branton, a riveter. He claimed Edith’s daughters as his own and, after they became mothers, would be lovingly known as “Poppa” to the grandchildren.

Jacqueline would attend public elementary schools in the South Bronx and, later, Queens. Photos capture her, beaming for the camera as she posed with schoolmates and teachers on the playground and in classrooms. Even then, it was hard for her not to recognize the flagrant inequality in her schools. Those lingering memories shaped her trajectory as a student, a professional, and a community leader.

At Junior High School 142Q in South Jamaica, Queens, she played double bass and, at her mother's insistence, took piano lessons. Whip-smart Jacqueline kept excelling – so much so that school leaders skipped her a grade. At age 16, she graduated from Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights, Queens, armed with a full, four-year scholarship to Hunter College. There, Jacqueline earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and, in 1974, a master’s degree from Hunter’s School of Social Work. In 1978, she earned a certificate from Rutgers University Summer School of Alcohol Studies. An executive master of public administration degree from Baruch College in 1987 rounded out her academic pedigree, which she barely talked about. To Jacqueline, her education and training were tools to help other people progress.

Jacqueline applied what she learned and experienced to social worker positions she held in Albany, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Her ultimate job was as the first director of the Lexington Avenue site of Kingsboro Drug and Alcoholism Treatment Center (now known as Kingsboro Addiction Treatment Center) in Bedford-Stuyvesant. When the facility moved from its original Methodist Hospital location to what then was a newly constructed site, nearby residents vehemently opposed the project. Yet, as friends and colleagues recall, Jacqueline “was militant about getting it done.” She pushed back in her signature, straight-no chaser style, winning the support of elected and other officials. The Kingsboro project went on to be acknowledged as the largest facility of its kind in the area, with “100 beds, 100 patients, and 100 staff members.” Jacqueline retired in 2002 from what remains a vital resource in Bed-Stuy.

Community uplift — and family— meant everything to Jacqueline. She volunteered for presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson, decking out her children, Omotayo and Abimbola, in “Jesse Jackson ‘88” T-shirts. She was a mother, modeling what it means to contribute to a cause. Jacqueline also campaigned for David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor, and took great pride in attending his 1990 inauguration.

For the National Association of Social Workers, Jacqueline played a pivotal role, coordinating meetings and serving in different capacities in the Brooklyn Division. For thirty-eight years, she was wholeheartedly dedicated to her beloved Delta Rho Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, where her daughters are members. Jacqueline helped lead the student scholarship-granting Medgar Evers College Community Council. She was active in the National Council of Negro Women, Incorporated, regularly attending one of its signature events, the Harambee Breakfast. In Brooklyn, Janes United Methodist Church counted her as an active, longtime member.

Jacqueline’s far-flung family — spread throughout England, Scotland, the United States, and her husband’s homeland of Sierra Leone — were her greatest love.

Oladipo Samuel Cole, also a social worker, first noticed Jacqueline one morning as she arrived at the New York City Human Resources Administration office, where they both were working. After a while, he asked her for her phone number. When she offered it, he committed it to memory, without writing it down. Their early conversations led to a courtship and to being wed at New York City Hall in 1968. After their nuptials, the couple moved into Brooklyn’s Willoughby Walk co-op apartments.

There, they raised their daughters and created a rich, rewarding life marked by, among other things, Jacqueline’s wanderlust and passion for travel. While honeymooning with Oladipo in 1969, she met her then Sierra Leone-based sister-in-law, Omotayo, in Paris. In 1972 and 1986, she journeyed to Sierra Leone with her husband, who died in 2014. Jacqueline relished cruises to Alaska, the British Isles, Caribbean beaches, and a host of other destinations. She cherished a cross-country ride on Amtrak and was an avid model train collector.

Jacqueline was an adventurer. When she decided to learn how to fish, she enlisted family and friends for a nighttime fishing excursion in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. She even registered for a weekend fly-fishing course offered by outdoors retailer L.L. Bean, driving from Brooklyn to Maine to revel in the experience. Beyond that trip, she never fly-fished again. She did, though, sometimes put her fishing pole to work during summer trips to Virginia Beach.

Jacqueline was notoriously forthright, funny, and dry-witted. She found delight and humor in everyday things. She could poke fun at herself. “Tanned legs, pale feet,” she typed in a caption of a photo of her teen-age self, sitting in her backyard with one leg extended. In another photo, her arms are spread out on each side, mimicking airplane wings. “Ready for takeoff,” the caption said.

In retirement, Jacqueline played bridge and traveled to regional tournaments with friends from her church. She loved Broadway shows, the opera, and bus rides to locations including Atlantic City and Foxwoods. Until the Covid-19 pandemic, Jacqueline had been an enthusiastic bowler. After the shutdown, and the deaths of several of her friends, she stopped participating in her bowling league.

Yet, she kept being quintessential Jacqueline, engaged and engaging.

Jacqueline Vivian Evans Cole transitioned on May 15, 2026, entrusting her former colleagues, relatives, sorority sisters, and friends to carry on her legacy of unfaltering work on behalf of our families, communities, and world.

Left to celebrate and remember her life are her daughters, Omotayo Christine Cole and Abimbola Cole Kai-Lewis; grandchildren, Jasoleil Amber Cineus, Channing Cineus, and Chase Cineus; sister, Wilma Denise Spradley (husband Mose Spradley, deceased); nieces, Yvette Aberdeen, Angela Griffith, Adenike Cole, Josephine Cole, Ebirunkeh Amedu, and Kashopeh Johnson; cousins, Olabisi Aberdeen, Oredola Ogunyemi, Eku Cecilia Ademu-John, Jerry Johnson, Dunstan Nicol-Wilson, Stephen Amedu, and additional cousins, nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews.

Preceding her in death were her niece, Tracey Newsome, nephew, Olukayode Aberdeen, brother in-law, Akiyemi Cole, and sisters-in-law, Omotayo Cole and Onikeh Thomas.