Maryanne D. Reddick

Maryanne Davidson Reddick, longtime Avon Park, Florida, resident, passed away at the age of ninety-one on February 7, 2014, in Orange City, Florida, after a long life filled with family and friends. Beloved wife, mother, daughter, and grandmother, she will be severely missed and forever in our hearts and memories. Maryanne is lovingly remembered for her sweet, generous nature, her fierce love, care, patience, and support for family, friends, and all who needed her help, and her many contributions to education in the state of Florida. Her always positive attitude, persistence, passion, strength, fighter's spirit, strong moral character, and love of family, church and her legions of former students were hallmarks of her character. Everyone who knew her remembers her as a wonderful teacher, fabulous cook, seamstress, artist, and steadfast friend. A former elementary school teacher, she loved children and was drawn to them as they were to her. Anytime that she was in public, children would find her, and she would be found talking with them. Maryanne was born the oldest of three children on May 8, 1922 to William Edwin and Willie Anne McCombs Davidson in St, Louis, Missouri. She grew up in Leasburg, Missouri with her brother, Buddy, and her sister, Bettysue. She graduated early from high school and was Valedictorian of her class. Before graduating from Southeast Missouri State University in 1941 with a degree in home economics and minors in art and sciences, she taught in a one-room school house in rural Missouri. After turning down a scholarship to study fashion design at Columbia University, she moved in the 1940's to help her parents and sister in their new home in Avon Park, Florida and took a job with the State Welfare Board as a social worker. On one of her case trips on a sandy dirt road, typical in Florida at the time, she had a flat tire. Fred Reddick, having returned from the Pacific Theatre in 1946, came to her aid, and they were later married on December 27, 1947. Theirs was a great love story; Maryanne and Fred were almost never apart, and were married for almost sixty-four years. She and her beloved Freddy each took care of the other. After receiving an elementary education degree from Florida Southern, Maryanne began to teach elementary school. She and Fred had two children, Holly Anne and Mary Candace, in the early nineteen fifties. After being a homemaker for five years, she returned to teaching and continued in teaching and administrative roles for Highlands County Schools until her retirement as Director of Elementary Education in 1983. In the 1960's, she received her master's degree in learning disabilities from the University of South Florida. She spent almost forty years in education, and toward the end of her career she worked on the state level, even appearing before Governor Bob Graham's cabinet in order to effect change in Florida laws governing the age for starting school. Maryanne was a member of Delta Kappa Gamma (a teacher honorary society) and later, the retired teacher's organization. Active in the First United Methodist Church all of the years she lived in Avon Park, Maryanne held church offices, taught various Sunday school classes, and worked as a leader in the Methodist Youth Fellowship. After retirement, Maryanne worked as a consultant for several educational publishing companies, and spent more than half of each year at hers and Fred's summer home in Franklin, North Carolina where she had family close by and many friends. There she was active in Oak Grove Baptist Church and enjoyed her longtime hobbies of cooking, sewing, gardening, and traveling (forty seven of the fifty states and Mexico). After being struck by a car in September of 2004 while carrying hurricane debris to the roadside at dusk during the aftermath of four hurricanes hitting Highlands County, she lived in DeLand in a nursing home and then in Deltona with full time caregiver, Carolyn Lane, near daughter Holly and family in DeLand and Candy and her family not far away in Fruitland Park. Maryanne is predeceased by her loving husband, Fred, and brother, Edwin Allen Davidson, and survived by her sister, Bettysue Davidson Nall (Cullman, Alabama); two daughters, Holly Ward (husband, Hugh) (DeLand, Florida) and Mary Candace Davis (Fruitland Park, Florida); three grandchildren, Hugh Campbell Ward, III (St. Augustine, Florida), Mary Love Ward (DeLand), and Kathryn Leigh Davis (Kensington, Maryland); many nieces and nephews, and Carolyn Lane, her loving caregiver for most of the last decade. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 1st at First United Methodist Church in downtown Avon Park, with the Rev. Gary Pendrak officiating. Visitation will begin at 10:00 a.m. at the church prior to the service. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to First United Methodist Church of Avon Park, Alzheimer's research, or any Hospice organization. Stephenson-Nelson Funeral Home of Avon Park is in charge.