Adaora Lathan

Adaora (Zora) Lathan was born on June 29th, 1952. Zora left this world peacefully on Wednesday morning, April 9, 2025, at her home in Highland Beach, MD, by her husband's side. Zora was 72 when she passed. She is survived by her loving husband of 30 years, Dr. William H. Sanders III, bothers Benjamin Lathan and Zeke Lathan, and a host of friends and family members. Zora was preceded in death by her parents, Benjamin Claude Lathan and Gladys Posey Lathan, and by her bother Armand Lathan.
Zora began her journey at an early age as an avid environmentalist, a precursor to her many contributions to the Town of Highland Beach, her final place of residence for the preceding 25 years. As a child, she gained an appreciation of the natural world from outings with her family, from museum visits to camping trips to national parks and forest preserves. At home, she would spend much of her play time outdoors, and delighted in the natural world, with such endeavors as chasing boys with snakes-not something normally attributed to a young girl. Her love of nature would be sustained throughout her life, through her early academic education, and during her college years, graduating with honors from the University of Illinois with dual degrees in photography and film design. Her filmmaking at the university would come back to honor her later in life when she took on a major project for Highland Beach.
After college, Zora took jobs as a ghost writer for a noted columnist for the Washington Post, and subsequently ended up at the National Audubon Society. While there, she developed and conducted a national campaign on waste reduction, and later became the national representative for Audubon to champion the Environmental Justice movement. That position and her work at Audubon, serendipitously, led her to Highland Beach. In a phone conversation with an environmental justice colleague, her friend mentioned the setting he was experiencing at the home he was renting, sighting egrets and herons not seen in the urban environment of Washington, DC where she lived. Inquisitive, a hallmark of Zora's persona, she inquired where in the world he was. It happened to be Highland Beach, and that conversation turned into an invitation to visit him and the town. Zora's and her husband's first visit to Highland Beach would turn out to be life changing. Neither had heard of the small town. The couple, by chance, met then Mayor Ray Langston that day, and both were tremendously impressed with Ray, the town and its history as an historic African American Town that was established in 1893 by Major Charles Douglass, the son of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Asking about homes for sale, Ray directed them to a vacant lot at the edge of the town. They contacted the listing agent the very next day, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
That planned visit and by chance encounter has had a significant and visible effect on the town as Zora, through the years, expended tremendous energy and dedication to projects that demonstrated the environmental ethos of the town, starting interestingly enough at the very entrance to the town. Many newer residents may not have known much about the gatekeeper's cottage that was used as the Town Hall-or the obstacles to replacing the severely dilapidated structure with a new Town Hall-that had stymied the town administration for years. Zora became aware of the barriers to building a new structure while serving as town manager, i.e., resolving the need for stormwater mitigation required to attain a building permit. She proposed a novel and heretofore unheard-of solution to the Mayor and Board of Commissioners: installing a Green Roof for the facility, in addition to rain gardens, and permeable pavers to mitigate stormwater runoff. Working diligently and tirelessly for months, and gaining approval from state and local agencies needed to green light the approach, the town was able to obtain approval for construction. And there's more
The green roof sparked the idea of building a green facility, and that effort, supported by a Green Team led by her husband-that included Zora-resulted in the LEED Platinum certified Town Hall, at that time only the second facility in the State of Maryland to achieve that distinction. And years later, with Zora's vision and assistance, the second floor of the Town Hall–that would not exist except for the green roof-was built-out to become an additional amenity for town residents, as well as serve as the Frederick Douglass Museum & Cultural Center (FDMCC) Annex.
A block away, on Douglass Ave, there is yet another testament to the design and management aspects of Zora's many environmental projects created on behalf of the town: the RainScaping Park. Zora conceived, designed, and oversaw all aspects of development of the pocket park that replaced an unsightly mess of a junk yard that had plagued residents for many years. The result is an attractive and useful facility that also serves as additional parking, and yet another amenity for residents and their guests. A few years later, Zora conceived a special fundraising project to be installed at the RainScaping Park. She developed a program to give residents the opportunity to purchase commemorative bricks to honor family and friends, and with her husband's assistance, installed the bricks–indeed the entire stone patio–in a circular pattern surrounding the main bench. All proceeds were contributed to the FDMCC, raising $6,600 to help fund museum programs.
Zora has promoted ecology, and more specifically, conservation landscaping, both in her community of Highland Beach as well as in the larger community, via the Chesapeake Ecology Center (CEC), a non-profit environmental organization that she founded in 2002. She has worked tirelessly with countless students and teachers, from grade school through college, both to educate and to install numerous conservation landscaping projects throughout Anne Arundel County. In addition to educating folks through the CEC, Zora has written numerous articles, and she co-wrote the book entitled Ecoscaping Back to the Future, that has been used extensively by Anne Arundel County, the City of Annapolis, Master Gardeners, and many garden and environmental groups. Environmental signage produced by the CEC has been used nationwide; and Zora has developed and distributed nationwide television and print Public Service Announcements on environmental and healthy eating topics.
Notably, Zora has designed and managed the installation of several rain gardens throughout town. The 2004 Living Shoreline installed on the town's beachfront deserves special mention. The huge cleanup and restoration project was conceived and managed by Zora in response to the devastation of Hurricane Isabel that demolished the town's pier and wrecked the entire beachfront; however, the silver lining was that the beach actually gained sand. With the motto God gave us this sand, and we are going to keep it, Zora raised grant funding for the restoration effort. She then worked with contractors and over three dozen volunteers from the Department of Natural Resources, the community, and beyond to install the living shoreline that has proven, over the years, to be effective in protecting the northern shoreline by retaining sand while subsequent storms have continued to erode the town's ever-shrinking shoreline.
However, the environment is not the sole passion and talent that Zora has brought to the community. Her respect for the legacy of her community and her desire to preserve the town's history motivated her to use her creative and artistic talents to serve the FDMCC, going well beyond her service as a docent and as a Board member. To honor the legacy at the event of the 125th anniversary of the town's founding, Zora secured grant funding (for this as well as many other environmental projects), and developed a series of exhibit panels to showcase the town's history, based on the book Highland Beach on the Chesapeake Bay. And, again, to honor the town at the 2023 Juneteenth celebration and for other programs, Zora updated and enhanced the entire exhibit to create portable banner exhibit panels, including a special banner created to honor Dr. Mary Church Terrell. Additionally, Zora organized and labeled a file cabinet full of historic documents as well as historic films, and other museum documents located at the Town Hall. She spent a great deal of time labeling 250+ town historic photos from the Highland Beach book (also used for exhibit panels); and she put photos (that she labeled and grouped in categories) and films, plus newsletters, and exhibit panels on thumb drives, which she included along with lists of material in two notebooks that were given to the museum director and the current mayor.
Zora's work and creativity in working with the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, has been remarkable and initiated the relationship with the Town of Highland Beach that continues to this day. The initial contact, and over six trips to the museum, was to have over 20 films of life in Highland Beach-most notably by resident Dr. Millard "Buddy" Dean-restored and digitized to preserve the films for our legacy (the restoration and digitization value is approximately $10K). The town was surprised and delighted at how thrilled the National Museum staff were to have access to the Highland Beach material, and to make it a proud part of the national collection. But the museum was also delighted to learn of original films by Zora, while a student at UIC. Zora's films have also become a welcome part of the collection. To Zora's delight and amazement, the National Museum requested that her films become part of their Great Migration Movie Project permanent collection, which is an outstanding program to preserve the history and contributions of black Americana. And more recently, the National Film Preservation Foundation included her films in their selection of 2022 Federal Grant Winners, a surprise and well-deserved honor, and a throwback to her work as a film student almost a half century ago, and the serendipity of her residency and efforts on behalf of Highland Beach.
We know that Highland Beach remains grateful to have had Zora as a resident of the town, notably for her many contributions to the betterment of the FDMCC and the community. Zora will be greatly missed as a giving person with an impressive legacy, and most particularly as a loving person by her husband and many friends.