Lucretia Little

Lucretia A. (Mrs. Darwin) Little died at her home in Jonesboro on October 2. She was 87 years old.

Lucretia (Curtis) Little was born in Henrietta, Oklahoma, February 5, 1921. She was a member of the O.L. Curtis family of Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she attended the University of Arkansas High School, graduating in 1938. She attended the University of Arkansas until 1941 at which time she met and married Darwin Little, just one semester shy of graduation. She returned to the U of A and earned her BS degree in Home Economics in 1957. She received her Masters of Arts Degree in Reading from La Verne College (CA) in 1973.

Mrs. Little taught elementary and junior high schools in Jonesboro, Arkansas and elementary school in Texarkana, Arkansas in the 1950s. She taught elementary school at Henry Dalton and Victor Hodge schools in Azusa, California in the 1960s and ‘70s. She became a Reading Specialist in 1973. She later took early teacher retirement and proceeded to work as a consultant at the Azusa School District office preparing materials for the reading curriculum. She went on to become the director of The Learning Center, a reading lab, in Pomona, California, for a number of years. After the center was closed she tutored reading at her home in Glendora, California until 1993.

In Azusa, she was the president of Delta Kappa Gamma teachers’ sorority, from whom she was awarded the Woman of the Year Award in 1993. She and her husband were also presidents of their Sunday School class, the Twigbenders, at Trinity United Methodist Church in Pomona.

Darwin Little passed away in February of 1999; the couple was married for 57 years. Mrs. Little is survived by her daughter, Darlu Littledeer, currently of Jonesboro, Arkansas; by a grandson, Devon Gleason of Salt Lake City, Utah; by three great-grandchildren, Brandon, Nicole, and Kaitlyn Gleason of Springville, Utah; and by a brother, Alex Curtis of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.

Burial will be at Baptist Ford Cemetery in Greenland, Arkansas under the direction of Emerson Funeral Home of Jonesboro.