Feet. Feet with bright red socks. Feet with bright red socks flipping over and over as my mother did cartwheels in the middle of the gym that was packed for the football pep rally. That is how I will remember my vivacious mother. My mom, Elizabeth Ann Stagner White, born May 17 ^th , 1940, to Vola Stagner White and F. Lee Stagner, a prominent Bowling Green attorney, was a revered teacher for over thirty years, most of those spent at Elkton Middle School, where she taught junior high English courses. But she didn't just teach. She inspired. She was able to do that because she was full of a glittering vitality. And the students knew, and knew deeply, that she genuinely loved them! And she was loved back by her students as well as her fellow teachers, whom she also loved, respected, and considered family.

Our house was overflowing with copious amounts of laughter, and it carried out into the world where she did charmingly zany things like singing, while dressed in full bird regalia, "The Bird of Paradise Flew Up My Nose" for a school fundraiser. She was overflowing with vim and vigor, someone with a dynamite personality and intrinsic talent in a profusion of aesthetic areas whether painting, theatre, music, sewing or crafting.

She also loved people through food. Whether homemade burrito parties when the church youth group came over to making our favorite meals for birthdays, to driving with a turkey and all the fancy fixings all the way from Kentucky to Virginia, when Tom and I were too sick to make it home for Christmas, because Mama didn't want us to be alone and not fed well. Scrumptious delights were really the words, "I love you," in tangible form from Betsy White.

And my mother loved so many people. What a thing to behold, watching her love on so many people! Love begetting love! Love in perpetuity! She always credited Jesus with that calling on her life, the fulcrum of all the love she gave! It was the most magnificent thing to witness how she especially loved my father so fiercely. And she still fiercely loved her parents, who had passed away in the 80s, and very much so loved and admired her older sister Pat. And oh, how she loved her children and their children with a wondrous, one might even say extravagant, kind of love that death can't diminish.

Elizabeth Stagner White was as altruistic as anyone you will ever find, often anonymously participating in acts of kindness and generosity to help others. She adopted two older kids out of the foster care system, which is rare now, but was even more anomalous back in the 70s. Mama still stayed in contact with some of her foster children that she couldn't adopt, whom she still considered her children. And she also had many exchange student children from throughout the world, some that are to this day truly family. What a gift it was to grow up in a house with such a diversity of people from throughout the world!

Because she was one of the most vibrant people I've ever met, it's so odd to now write of her in the past tense of her death. Someone who was the epitome of action and vitality…well, it seems impossible to not write about her with potent present-tense verbs. Even though she technically passed away on December 25 ^th , 2021, after a yearlong battle following her stroke, infection, and Covid, her mammoth ebullience shines on in all those she loved and helped.

She is survived by many who love her and will forever carry some of her light with them, such as her beloved husband, James H. White, her son, Lowell White, her daughter, Lana K. W. Austin, her foster daughter Sandy Claxton, her Swedish son, Häkan Andersson, her sister, Pat Kaim, as well as her grandchildren Anna, Alexandra, Michael, James, Kate-Elizabeth and Thomas. (Written by Lana K. W. Austin)