Sada Louise Clarke

CLARKE, Sada Louise, 92, died on October 23, 2010, in Richmond, Virginia, her home for the past 67 years. Although her parents were residing in Washington, D.C. at the time, she was born in 1918 while her mother was visiting her maternal grandparents, Emma Belle and William Henry Emerson, at Hodges, South Carolina. Sada Louise Clarke was preceded in death by her parents, Louise Emerson and W. Spurgeon Clarke, of the Mt. Carmel Community of Seaboard, North Carolina; and her sister, Kathleen Clarke Pearce of Atlanta. She is survived by her brother, William S. Clarke Jr. Col. USAF (Ret.) of Raleigh; and his son, William S. Clarke III of New York City; and his daughter, Elizabeth Stephenson Clarke of Washington, D.C.; her nephew, William Clarke Pearce of Buford, Georgia; and niece, Louise Pearce Hillenbrand of Columbus, North Carolina; and by her cousins, Carol Smith Bennett and Mabel Smith of Williamsburg, Virginia, and Maggi Bradon of Atlanta. Sada Louise Clarke graduated from Severn High School in Severn, N.C. in 1935, from Meredith College in Raleigh in 1939, and did graduate studies at the University of Richmond. She taught school in Wilson's Mills, N.C. before accepting employment with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia in 1943. There she completed a 40-year career as an associate agricultural research economist. Her achievements included the 1973 publication by the Reserve Bank of her book, "The Changing Face of Fifth District Agriculture," an analysis of the transition of agriculture during the quarter century 1945 to 1970 in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, most of West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. While at the bank, Miss Clarke also served on the Virginia Agricultural Credit Committee for many years, and in 1981 was honored by this committee and the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service with a plaque "for significant contributions in agricultural finance research." She was a member of First Baptist Church, Richmond. Her lifelong interests included women's basketball, which she played in high school and college; and men's basketball, in which she was a pioneer in the early 1940s by being one of the first women to coach a men's high school basketball team. She played and closely followed tennis, and was a lover of horses, horseback riding and horse racing. An avid bird watcher, Miss Clarke was a member of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and participated in several of the laboratory's Citizen Science Research Projects after retiring from the Federal Reserve Bank. She was for 18 years a burgess of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and was a loyal supporter of Meredith College in Raleigh, which in 2003 named the Curriculum Classroom of its newly dedicated Science and Mathematics Building in her honor. Memorial services for Sada Louise Clarke will be held at the Huguenot Chapel of Woody Funeral Home, 1020 Huguenot Road, Midlothian, Virginia at 11 a.m. Wednesday, October 27, 2010 and at the Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, 300 St. Mary's Street, Raleigh, North Carolina at 11 a.m. Tuesday, November 9, 2010. A private interment will follow in the mausoleum of Raleigh's historic Oakwood Cemetery. Sada Louise Clarke was much loved by her family. She will truly be missed. Online condolences to: woodyfuneralhomehuguenot.com.



This obituary was originally published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.