Sara May Gibbs Boush died January 23 at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, less than a month before her 95th birthday. She was born Sara May Gibbs in Tift County, Georgia, February 17, 1927, the seventh of nine children of Caroline and Ollie Gibbs. After graduating from Tifton High School, she attended Drake University but left after a year to marry G. Mallory Boush in 1945, a marriage that lasted until his death in 2015. In August 1945, she was on the cover of the Atlanta Journal.
Sara and Mallory lived in Blacksburg, Virginia, Columbus, Ohio, Mexico City, Lexington, Kentucky, Holland, Virginia, Baghdad, Iraq, Madison, Wisconsin, Honolulu, and Savannah, Georgia, before moving to Maryland in 2008.
While in Madison, she earned a BA in German and an MA in Art History at the UW-Madison. Her Master’s thesis on 18th Century Women Artists began a long-standing interest in that subject. She also volunteered as a docent at the Elvehjem Museum in Madison. In the mid-1960s, she had a radio show in Franklin, Virginia. In Baghdad, she taught English at the American School for Girls and wrote and directed a musical play. In Savannah, she volunteered at the Telfaire art museum and the Mighty Eighth Air Force museum nearby.
She was a charter member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Skidaway Island, Georgia. More recently, she was a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in College Park, Maryland.
She was an accomplished seamstress, cook, and self-taught pianist. She published stories in the Chicago Tribune and Weekly Reader and wrote books and songs for her children and grandchildren.
She is survived by her sister, June Wiggins, of Tifton; three children, Carol (Judd Nelson) of College Park Maryland, David M. (Dara Lancaster) of Portland Oregon, Andrew (Jennifer Heiser) of Green Bay Wisconsin; five grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.