Portrait of Norma Stimson. IMB Photo

Norma Lee Stimson, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in France, died Jan. 23, 2026. She was 89.  

Norma was born May 31, 1936, in Pinetta, Florida, to the late Walter Clyde and Dixie Seals Lightsey. She received the Bachelor of Arts from Valdosta (Georgia) State College and the Master of Arts in Library Science from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She also attended the University of Houston in Victoria, Texas, and the University of Texas in Austin.  

After college, Norma remained in Valdosta for two more years while teaching English to high school sophomores. She was accepted into the work-study program at Emory University in 1960 and received her master’s degree in librarianship three years later. Norma’s first job as a professional librarian was in South Carolina, where she lived for the next 17 years. She was a field services librarian with the South Carolina State Library and coordinated library services for the disadvantaged. She became director of the York County Library in Rock Hill in 1966 and was head of the extension services for the Greenville, South Carolina, library system from 1971 to 1980. 

Norma met Gayle Stimson on a mission trip in 1979. They were married on Aug. 24, 1980. After moving to Texas, she went back to school and completed the course work for her Texas teacher’s certificate and her librarian’s certificate. She worked as a librarian for the Yoakum (Texas) Junior High School and then for the St Jospeh’s High School in Victoria, Texas. 

While seeking missionary appointment she wrote, “My call to missions began as a call to full-time service when I was a teenager. I was young, had no one to advise me … so I never followed through on that call. The call has resurfaced from time to time, and then dimmed, but it has never died completely. It began to grow as my church involvement grew, and it grew stronger as my study of missions increased. … It was 1990 in Glorieta that the flame became a blazing fire, and my heart was broken for missions. When I realized that Gayle was experiencing the same feelings, we agreed to contact the Foreign Mission Board and to see what our possibilities for service were.” 

In 1991, the International Mission Board appointed Gayle and Norma missionaries to France. Norma worked in the business office assisting Gayle, who served as mission business manager and treasurer for the France and France Benelux Missions from 1994 to 2002. They also worked in Bible literature distribution. Norma taught Sunday school to children at the Morsang-Sur-Orge Baptist Church in Paris and taught a course at Faculte de Theologie Vaux sur Seine Seminary.  

A funeral service was held Feb. 7 at Second Baptist of Houston North Campus in Texas.