Lael Holman Wilson, age 85, died Monday, August 29,2022, in Bradenton, Florida.
Lael was born February 25, 1937, in East Aurora, NY, the daughter of Avery Holman and Marie Mendonsa Holman. She graduated from South Park High School in Buffalo, NY and Magna Cum Laude from Syracuse University. She was trained in special education for the deaf at the Clarke School in Northampton, MA, and worked in the Buffalo public schools as a Speech Therapist.
At the age of 22, she accepted Christ as her savior after reading the Gospel of John in a borrowed Bible, and she soon felt called to be a missionary with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. She enrolled in Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and met Darryl Wilson, who also felt called to be a Bible translator. After training in linguistics at the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the couple was married in Marilla, NY on June 2, 1962.
Following jungle training in southern Mexico, Darryl and Lael went to Papua New Guinea, where, in the course of 18 years, they translated the New Testament into the Suena and Zia languages. After returning to the States, Lael produced and edited a periodical for missionary women entitled Words for Women. The Wilsons retired from Wycliffe in 2002 after 41 years of service.
Lael is survived by her husband, Darryl; two sons, Mark (Beverly)Wilson of Palm Bay, FL, and Todd (Helena) Wilson of Bradenton, FL; four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents and three brothers.
