Arthuryne J. Welch-Taylor

WELCH-TAYLOR

ARTHURYNE J. WELCH-TAYLOR

Mrs. Arthuryne J. Welch-Taylor, age 105, died Thursday, May 12 at Howard County Community Hospital where she had been admitted two days earlier. Members of her immediate family at her bedside said that she was not in pain and expired peacefully. During her final months the family matriarch was able to enjoy a number of well-attended celebrations, including the most recent Thanksgiving, her March 11 birthday, and Mother's Day on May 8.

The family lovingly demurs regarding her request to be remembered solely as one who strove to be a good mother; although, raising four college-educated children on her own after the sudden death of her husband in 1949 certainly qualifies as a signal achievement. Mrs. Taylor's many other accomplishments, however, cannot go unheralded.

The fifth of six children born to Rev. Richard T. and J. Augusta Andrews of Houston, Mrs. Taylor (Mom, Grandma, Coco), like most of her siblings, was a constant in the field of education because of its importance in enhancing the prospects of young African Americans. She first prepared herself for this lifelong quest – earning her B.A. degree cum laude in home economics from Prairie View A&M University (Texas). Blessed with both beauty and brains, Mrs. Taylor, despite being an underclassmen, was elected as the first Ms. Prairie View. For two years after graduating in 1937, she worked as a Home Demonstration agent in San Augustine, the oldest county in Texas, where horses were still tied up in the town square, she liked to reminisce. She relocated to Langston University to work as administrative assistant to the president of the historically Black college (or university) (HBCU) and where she met and married fellow university employee James A. Welch. They would later hold positions at two other HBCUs: he as business manager at Jackson State University (Jackson, MS) and Tennessee State University (Nashville), and she as assistant director of the TSU Placement Bureau.

Six months pregnant with her fourth child when James and a student were killed in a tragic bus accident upon returning home from a fund-raising college jazz band engagement in Alabama, Mrs. Taylor then strengthened her resolve to provide for her family. She obtained a M.S. degree in Elementary Education from TSU in 1953 and was awarded a scholarship to pursue an Ed.S. degree in Elementary Supervision at George Peabody College, now merged with Vanderbilt University in Nashville. After graduation she accepted the position as assistant professor of Education at TSU. Further studies were done in Language Arts at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, and she was a visiting professor of Education at HBCUs Texas Southern University in Houston and her alma mater Prairie View A&M University.

In 1969, Mrs. Taylor moved to Washington, DC, to become associate professor of General Studies at Washington Technical Institute (now University of DC). That same year she married Henry L. Taylor, Ph.D., then a civil rights coordinator with the Rural Electrification Administration in the Department of Agriculture. Dr. Taylor died in 1987.

An avid traveler, her adventures increased markedly after retiring from the National Educational Association in 1986, where she had worked as a research specialist since 1970. She managed to visit every continent except Antarctica, often accompanied by her husband, or sister, the late Carol Joy Hobson-Smith, or her daughter.

Ever undaunted, Mrs. Taylor experienced and shared so much of America's greatest challenges and moments – ratification of women's voting rights; World War I, Spanish Flu; the Great Depression; World War II, Korean War; Civil Rights Movement; assassinations of the Kennedys, Malcolm X, King; the Vietnam War; and both elections of America's first Black president, Barack Obama. Known to possess infinite patience and a generosity of spirit and personal resources, Mrs. Taylor sought to support and further the lives of the less fortunate through her lifelong dedication to tithing within whatever church community she was associated as well as working to uplift and nourish others through, for example, her church's food distribution program.

She is survived by daughter, Melvadeen Bailey of Columbia, MD; stepdaughter, Wynelle Welch of New York; sons, James of Durham, NC, Reginald of Falls Church, VA, and Robert Welch of Austin, TX; granddaughter Myka Sparrow of Dallas, TX; grandsons Lawrence Bailey and Dr. Babu Welch of Dallas, TX, Sule Welch of Atlanta, GA, and Reginald J. Welch of Austin, TX. She also had six great-grandchildren, and step children Henry L. Taylor, Jr. of Buffalo, NY, Diana Tolliver of Bowie, MD, and Ruth Matlock of Glenarden, MD, and a number of step grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Memorial services and interment will take place June 11, 2022, beginning 12:30 p.m. at Ft. Lincoln Cemetery and Chapel, 3401 Bladensburg Rd., Brentwood, MD 20722. Flowers may be sent to the Chapel and any donations may be made in Mrs. Taylor's name to Fellowship Baptist Church, 5605 Colorado Ave., NW 20011, where she served as trustee emeritus and founder.