Ernestine Norton, 98, longtime Kansas City, Missouri resident, passed away at her home on November 23, 2023 after a brief illness.
She was born on April 9, 1925 in Clayton, Alabama to Ernest W. Norton, local attorney, and Alice Jean Woolverton Norton, native of Abilene, Kansas, who had served in France during World War I in the Army Nurse Corps.
After graduating from high school in Clayton, she attended Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia, then attended the University of Alabama to graduate in 1945 with a Bachelor of Science in Education. She earned a Master’s degree at George Peabody College, Nashville, Tennessee, and a Master’s of Religious Education at Woman’s Missionary Training School, Louisville, Kentucky. She served as Religious Education Director at a Washington, D. C. church.
In her career as an educator, she taught in the English Department at George Peabody College, Wayland Baptist College in Plainview, Texas and Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas. Her career culminated at Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri where she taught in the English Department from 1964-1990.
In the summers Ernestine was able to travel in much of Europe, Israel and Mexico. Wherever she lived, she felt blessed to form friendships that continued for her lifetime. In the past 50 years, she gave a book entitled Good Grief to help friends and family find comfort and rediscover hope after a personal loss. In her Kansas City retirement, she was a member of DAR, the P.E.O. Sisterhood, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church where she served on the Altar Guild. She volunteered at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Each Epiphany Eve, she enjoyed hosting friends at her home to celebrate the Twelfth Night. She was pre-deceased by her parents and her brother James Thomas Norton. She is survived by her niece Jeanne Norton Rollberg, Little Rock, Arkansas, her sister-inlaw Joan Norton, Fleming Island, Florida, loving cousins, devoted friends, former students and P.E.O. sisters.
A memorial service was held on December 5, 2023 at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City with inurnment in the church columbarium.
Ernestine Norton carried her Alabama accent and her love of Clayton for her 98 years. Donations in her memory would be especially meaningful to the Town & County Library, ATTN: Robbie Mitchell, Director, P. O. Box 518, Clayton, Alabama 36016. In Drayfus Hightower’s book, To Remember a Vanishing World, her mother, Alice Norton, appears in a photograph with Lucille Martin, Marie Hightower, and Mrs. Ben Baker as a tribute to those who worked to bring the new 1962 library into existence. Ernestine herself made periodic donations to the Library, including books.
