Sharon Anne White

Sharon Anne White

July 26, 1944 – November 2, 2017

Sharon White, a retired schoolteacher and lifelong explorer of America, passed away peacefully after succumbing to Goodpasture Disease on Thursday, November 2, 2017. She was 73 years old.

Sharon was born in Ashland, Kansas to Hugh and Gladys White. The youngest child of four, Sharon grew up on a farm on the shortgrass prairie west of Kingsdown, Kansas. She spent much of her youth traveling across the country by car with her family, visiting natural and historical wonders of all 48 contiguous states.

Sharon began school in Kingsdown and graduated high school in Bloom, Kansas in 1962. Upon matriculation she pursued a degree in elementary education at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where she joined the Delta Zeta sorority.

During these years Sharon traveled to the Soviet Union with her family on an agricultural tour of the Eastern Bloc during the height of the Cold War. Sharon later went through Peace Corp training in Tempe, Arizona where she learned the Portuguese language in anticipation of being stationed in Brazil.

In 1967 she married fellow student and former high school classmate Michael Shelor, who was pursuing a degree in architecture while Sharon was completing her bachelors and student teaching in Wamego, Kansas. Michael—an officer in the US Army—and Sharon lived in Anchorage, Alaska for one year after their first daughter, Michele was born, then moved to Phoenix in 1971 where son, Brandon and daughter, Melanie were born.

Never one to shy away from unfamiliar peoples and places, Sharon took teaching jobs across much of the desert Southwest, spending years in and around the Navajo reservation in Chinle, Ganado, and Sanders in Arizona, and in Gallup, New Mexico, as well as teaching in smaller towns across the high plains of eastern Colorado, in Otis and Vilas, and western Kansas, closer to her childhood home.

In 1989 Sharon went back to pursue her Masters in Special Education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and took her first special education teaching job in Albuquerque in 1990. During the following years, Sharon managed and taught a more challenging set of students which she worked hard to reach out and teach to. In 1997 she established a permanent residence in Phoenix, where she taught special ed., science, social studies, and language to immigrant and disadvantaged elementary students in low-income neighborhoods.

Sharon is survived by her three children Michele & partner Philip Weddle, Brandon, and Melanie, granddaughter Franka, brother David (deceased) & Althea White. brother Myron & Norma White, and sister Janis & Pete Lindsey.

Memorial Services will be held on Saturday December 9, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. at the Kingsdown Cemetery with a lunch after the service at the Kingsdown Presbyterian Church.

Donations may be made in memory of Sharon Anne White: National Park Foundation, 1110 Vermont Ave, NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC 20005, donate.nationalparks.org/ or The Nature Conservancy in Kansas 2420 NW Button Rd Topeka, KS 66618, (785) 233-4400.