Lorraine Fullbright

Lorraine O. (Barker) Fullbright departed this life March 13, the year of our Lord 2024, a resident of Runk & Pratt Pearls of Life Senior Living Community, Lynchburg, Virginia.  Born June 3, 1925, to Ben and Hazel (Groendyke) Barker, in Beaver, Oklahoma, she graduated from Laverne High School.  She began college at Oklahoma A&M, then obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Education from Boston University.  She devoted her life to the art of teaching elementary school, which she did with ingenuity and innovation for multiple decades before retiring from Edward Devotion School in Brookline, Massachusetts.  She married Wilbur D. Fullbright on January 2, 1947, her lifelong partner until his passing on November 22, 2020.    

She was flint, she was spark, she was fire. She was the opposite of whatever rust is. Formidable, stubborn, persistent.   She was the anvil, the sword, the smelting and the fashioning of the implement.  She was the seed, she was the harvester.  She was the lantern, the innkeeper.  She held the things and their meaning.  She was the collector, the rapture of the pursuit.  She was historian, seeker, orator.  She imbued belief in those who lacked, emboldened those who sought, revealed to those who saw.  In her classroom, she returned every lost sheep to the flock.  

Mrs. Fullbright, to hundreds of school students, Grandmother to her family “students,” Mom to three boys, peerless wife.   But her legacy is faithful servant.   She studied, believed, practiced, prayed…and prayed…and prayed, as Paul implored.  She served – supporting, encouraging, prodding, nurturing, loving.  Receiving from her Savior and giving to others, she extracted joy from this life and laid up stores for the next.  Somewhere, someone is remembering passages from the Sermon on the Mount, memorization of which she incentivized with a standing offer of $100.  

There is a quote from a Russian opera: 

“We shall rest when the day’s work is done, 

But the first rays of sunrise will find us.”

Lorraine Fullbright is now reunited with Christ, reunited with her adoring husband Wilbur, whom she loved fiercely and supported relentlessly.  Her day’s work is done, and the warm sun now greets God’s faithful servant as she wakes to a new sunrise.  

She is survived by her sister LaMoyne Fox of Katy, Texas, her three sons, Glen A. Fullbright of Edmond, Oklahoma, Karl R. Fullbright and Lynn (Preston) Fullbright, his wife, of Reno, Nevada, and Dale N. Fullbright and Cynthia J. (Kluge) Fullbright, his wife, of Lynchburg, Virginia, as well as four grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren, numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews.

In lieu of flowers, tell someone you love them, do something good in this world, and spread the love and generosity that Lorraine showed in her example.