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In Memoriam

Former Whitman College staff member Claire Norsworthy passed away April 19, 2012, in Walla Walla.

The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reported, "Claire attended the University of Colorado in Boulder. While there she met her future husband, then 1st Lt. David Ray Norsworthy of the United States Army. As Claire liked to tell it, ‘I was born in Wyoming, Ray in Louisiana – we met in Colorado, married in New Mexico and honeymooned along the way back to North Carolina’" for graduate studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Claire and Ray celebrated 50 years of marriage in 2007.

After Ray’s completion of graduate school, they moved several times, ending up in Walla Walla in 1968, when Ray began his career as professor at Whitman College.

From the early 1970s to 1995, Claire held a variety of administrative assistant positions at Whitman College, the last of which was in the music department.

Claire enjoyed needlepoint, birdwatching and lunching with friends. She was also an avid and discerning reader of mysteries.

Claire is survived by her husband, Ray; her children, Scott, Ruth and Vance; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her infant daughter, Margaret Ann, in 1962.

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