Willy Lou Stearns

Willy Lou Jones Stearns died in her Bel Air home on November 4, 2008. She was 94.

Born on December 11, 1913 in Grassy Creek, NC, she was the sixth of Charles A. and Alevia L. Jones' eight children. In 1917, the family moved to Sharon, MD, where her father purchased a 150 acre farm. A graduate of Highland High School, she earned her teaching certificate from Towson Normal School (now Towson University) in 1931. At age eighteen, she started teaching at Old Post Road in Edgewood. Later, she moved to Greenwood School in Fountain Green, a two room schoolhouse equipped with a potbellied coal stove and an outhouse. She taught grades 1-3 while her friend Dorothy Edwards, taught grades 4-6. She recalled C. Milton Wright, then Harford County School superintendant, coming to the school, getting a box of toilet tissue out of the trunk of his car, and saying, "Keep up the good work girls!", before driving off. She later transferred to Aberdeen Elementary, where she once had sixty pupils in her class on the first week of school because another teacher quit. In the mid 1950s, she transferred to Bel Air Elementary where she completed her thirty seven year career in 1974. Having raised three sons together, her beloved husband of twenty two years, C. Courtney Stearns, died of leukemia in 1963. After her retirement from teaching, she traveled the world, visiting more than twenty countries. Her preferred mode of travel being passenger freighter, she once spent two weeks in Japan at the expense of the shipping company while her ship was being repaired. In 1975, she
was visiting the ruins of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, when the country was seized by the Khmer Rouge. Her plane was one of the last to fly out
before the takeover. In addition to traveling, she enjoyed reading, gardening, playing bridge with her many friends and spending time with her devoted family.

She is survived by her three sons, J. David Stearns of Jarrettsville, MD, Cameron C. Stearns of Baltimore, MD, and Ronald M. Stearns of Bel Air, MD; brother, H. Bradley Jones of Parkville; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Donations in her honor can be made to the Humane Society of Harford County, 2208 Connelly Road, Fallston, MD 21047.