BAIRD, Willetta Florence

Newspaper Unknown May 1919 Obituary - Willetta Florence Baird was born near Wolcott, Indiana, October 31, 1877. The family came to Kansas in 1880, first residing near Oswego, but settling in 1884 on the farm in Osage township, which has since been their home. Florence completed the common schools of Labette county and graduated from the County High School in 1900. The next fall, in company with one of her classmates, Mary Hodge, new Mrs. Boone, she went to Lenapah, Indian territory, and taught a three months' subscription school. This was the beginning of fourteen years of teaching in rural and city schools two years of which were spent near Prescott, Arizona, in the region made famous by the story by Harold Bell Wright, "When a Man's a Man" one year in the Baumgartner district north of Neodesha, reputed to be the richest rural school district in the world, having at that time ---- of two oil tank farms, five years in the city schools of Iola and two years in the high school at Argonia, Kansas. During these years of teaching, the summer months were generally spent as a student at the State Normal at Emporia, the Manual Training Normal at Pittsburg, or the Agricultural College at Manhattan. In 1916 she gave up teaching and devoted herself entirely the completing of a college course. She graduated from the Kansas State Agricultural College with the class of 1918, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Science in Home Economics. In order to finish with the class of 1918 however, it was necessary for her to remain for the Summer School. Not withstanding the unusual heat and intimations of failing health undoubtedly apparent to herself, she carried a heavy assignment through the session and completed the work for graduation. Desiring work of more settled tenure and less wearing nature than teaching, she began in September a special course in banking. In October ill health culminated in an acute illness necessitating an operation, which revealed the fact that she had but a limited time to live. The indomitable courage, the candid perspective, the unselfishness that had marked her life as a teacher, struggling to secure a better preparation for herself, yet delaying her own education in furthering that of her sister, sustained her in the crisis and she relinquished bravely the natural expectation of years of congenial, remunerative work in pleasant association with family and friends. The months of suffering which followed were endured with heroic fortitude and patient submission to the inevitable. She died May 11, 1919. Florence was a member of the Congregational church and of the __________________ performance of her duties entailed by these associations, fulfilled her sense of social and religious obligations. The self-sacrifice, the resolute will to overcome obstacles, the determination to realize a larger vision the joy in doing and achieving, which characterized her life, differ not in kind from the attributes of those whom the world has called great. In her loss the family and relatives have the deep sympathy of a large circle of neighbors and friends, who while sorrowing with them, rejoice in the assurance of their future reunion with the one that has gone before. She is survived by her father and mother, four sisters Mamie, Katie, Eunice and Elsie, and one brother. Vernon, of Strathmore, California, one little brother, Warren having preceded her to the life beyond.