Two weeks ago, the world lost a wonderful teacher.
In her ninety years, Sarah Lucinda Davison Howe touched many lives. As a professional, early in her career she taught in the public schools and later gave music lessons out of her home. She taught reading as a volunteer for the Gaston County Literacy Council and Sunday School as a volunteer for her church. Those weren’t her only volunteer efforts: she served as a Certified Lay Pastor, she sang in the choir, and seemed to have a hand in just about every facet of church life.
She slowed down as she aged, but well into her eighties she was still playing piano for Sunday services in the retirement home where she spent her last years.
She was never loud or pushy or self-aggrandising. When others recognised her efforts, she didn’t quite know what to do with the praise. The Rotary Club honoured her for her years of volunteer labour for the Literacy Council, but the plaque naming her a Paul Harris Fellow never got hung on the wall; her walls and dresser tops were filled with photos of family and her older daughter’s paintings. She was one of the legions of quiet, dedicated, extraordinary ordinary people who go about the hard work, day in and day out, year after year, of making their community, and the world, a better place.
We’ll miss you, Mama.