Wilda (Sue) Branch

Wilda “Sue” Edington Branch, 78, of Rotan, passed away on Tuesday, November 11, 2025. She spent her life doing three things with her whole heart: loving her family, teaching children and working on the ranch she loved. She spoke plainly, worked hard, loved deeply, and expected the same kind of honesty and effort from the people around her.

Sue was born August 3, 1947, in Santa Anna, Texas, and raised at Cross Plains, the daughter of Raymond “Hick” Edington and Wilda Sylvia (Klutts) Edington. Her dad farmed cotton and ran cattle. Her mother cooked, sewed, welded during the war and believed that if you were going to do something, you did it right. Sue grew up in that world and carried it with her for the rest of her life.

She graduated from Cross Plains High School in 1965 and earned her education degree from McMurry University while playing basketball for the Warhawks, with additional study at Howard Payne. Early in her career she taught English and coached volleyball and basketball at Stamford High School, and later spent a year teaching in Jayton.

On January 20, 1973, Sue married James Ira Branch at First Baptist Church in Aspermont after being set up on a blind date. They were later blessed with their son, Ryan, and daughter, Terry Jane, and she poured herself into being their mother with the same determination she brought to a classroom or a cattle pen.

If you ever worked cattle with Sue Branch, you learned very quickly she was not just there to “help.” She was working, right alongside everybody else.

In 1979, Sue joined Rotan ISD, where she taught until her retirement in 2006. She believed schools existed for students first, and she tried to live that out every day. She loved and taught generations of children in Rotan and took pride in every one of them who learned to read, to think, and to do things the right way.

When school was out, she stepped straight back into ranch clothes. She was a real hand. She was ready to work no matter the time of day or night and regardless of how hot or cold it was outside. Even after a stroke and a broken hip, the sound of a pickup starting in the yard still pulled her toward the door with her walker, ready to go see what needed to be done on the ranch. She did not know how to walk away from work or from responsibility.

She loved horses and rode her share of them. One day after school she went to look at a horse for Ryan and Terry, climbed on one that was not as gentle as advertised, and ended up on the ground after being bucked off. It hurt, but she did not let it slow her down.

Sue also loved her friends. She played bridge for decades with a loyal group of ladies, moving from house to house. She helped set up the card tables, got the house ready, then sat down to play with the same quiet focus she brought to lesson plans and brandings.

She nearly always had a camera close by. Over the years she filled tubs with photographs: cattle works, horses, dusty pickups, kids in the yard, grandkids at play, family around the table. A big piece of her family’s history lives in those pictures that she insisted on taking.

She was also a homemaker in the best sense of the word. Sue could sew bedspreads, curtains, valances and pillows, and even leather belts and chaps, a skill she picked up from her mother and grandmother. Her work still hangs in closets and covers beds and windows. It is the kind of everyday beauty that quietly lasts.

In the kitchen, she prided herself on her desserts. Her strawberry cake was so loved that cowboys sat on tailgates after eating her cake and wrote down the recipe by hand to take home. Every birthday meant a “whiskey cake,” a rum cake that came down through the family. She cooked for crews at the house and loaded lunches into a pickup so they could eat at the pasture, because hungry men and women working in the dust and wind still needed a real meal.

She knew how to play as hard as she worked. She loved taking the kids to Six Flags every year and rode the roller coasters and water rides right along with them instead of watching from the shade. When it was time to work, it was time to work. When it was time to play, she was all in for that too.

People who knew Sue will remember several things at once. She could be fiery. She could be blunt. She could also be kind, protective and quietly proud of the people she loved. She wanted fences straight, pens painted, shrubs trimmed and schoolwork done right. That attention to detail carried into how she raised her children, how she treated her students and how she helped on the ranch. Underneath all of it was a steady, stubborn kind of love.

Her greatest joy late in life was her grandchildren, Macy Marie and Ira Hayes Morris. She wanted to see them as often as she could. Most days, if she had anything to say about it, included at least a quick trip to Aspermont so she could lay eyes on them herself.

Sue is survived by her loving and devoted husband of nearly 53 years, James Ira Branch of Rotan; her children, Ryan Branch and Terry Jane Morris and husband Jeremiah; and her grandchildren, Macy Marie Morris and Ira Hayes Morris. She is also survived by her sister, Terry Ann Dukes of Horseshoe Bay; her nephew, James William “Will” McAdams and family of Austin; and former students, neighbors, bridge partners and ranch friends.

She was preceded in death by her parents and her sister, Bobby Nell, who passed away from polio in 1950.