Louise Frances Atterbury

Her life was a full one, reflecting and shaped by the love, joys, challenges, and tragedies that were integral to her extended time on earth.

She was born in Columbia, Missouri on November 13, 1918 and raised there by her parents, Frederick T. Leebrick and Masie Goff Leebrick. As a six year old she was diagnosed with scarlet fever which the local newspaper reported with the comment that "she is not expected to survive." But, of course, she did, for 94 more years.

In her youth, Louise was an accomplished ballet, contemporary and tap dancer, who performed extensively throughout Missouri. After graduation from Columbia Hickman High School in 1936 she attended Christian College in Columbia and graduated in 1938 with a degree in dance. She studied and performed in New York for a period of time before returning to Columbia to join the dance faculty at Christian. She also started what was then the only dance academy in the city.

Louise married her high school sweetheart Logan Atterbury on April 11, 1940. Her son Alan was born in 1942, about the time Logan joined the Army and went off to war as an Army Air Corps officer and pilot. During the war, Louise left her dance career behind and raised Alan alone in Columbia for five years until 1947 when Logan's post war duties allowed him to return from Europe. Upon Logan's return the two embraced Logan's military career and the related itinerant life. The family moved frequently, setting up eighteen households over the next twenty years, living in both interesting and mundane locations. Favorites were Falmouth, Massachusetts, Colorado Springs, Colorado and Nagoya, Japan. Whatever the new destination though, she approached each move by expressing what became a family motto and theme: "Well, here we go, Adventures Again!" Her next step when the furniture arrived at the new destination was to have the home fully organized and livable almost as the movers departed.

After Logan's retirement from the Air Force in 1967 the couple eventually moved back to Columbia and enjoyed a happy life involving travel, golf, gardening, and doting on grandchildren. Logan experienced a very disabling stroke in 1988. Thereafter, Louise was his daily caregiver centering her own life entirely around his needs until he passed away in 2000. By that time the couple had moved to Foxwood Springs Living Center in Raymore, Missouri where Louise would continue to live until her own passing, all the while enriching the lives of the three generations of her family that followed her with stories stretching over the ten decades of her life. She regularly attended church services and lectures at Foxwood and until very recently continued her practice of at least annual trips to Naples, Florida. She never lost her lifetime appreciation for ballet, the beauty of flowers and gardens or her interest in keeping abreast of what was happening with her grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Louise enjoyed and loved her family to the fullest and they loved her back, all providing, in various fashion, much appreciated roles of concern and attention to her as she aged. This adoration was on grand display during a weekend of celebration of her 100th birthday last November which she and her family thoroughly enjoyed. In addition to Alan and his wife Mary, Louise is survived by her granddaughter Jenny and husband Ed Stevens along with their children Logan, Henry and Alan (Buzz); grandson Andy and his wife Gwyn and their children Prentice, Chase, Wesley and Sloane; and grandson David and his wife Lauren and their children Baker, Woody and Rush.

Louise was predeceased by her sister Marie White and brother Frederick Leebrick. Louise deserves her own place of remembrance among The Greatest Generation. Her family, for certain, will always remember her as such.

Louise was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Kansas City on July 22.

The family requests no flowers. Louise can be remembered by a small gift to the Louise Leebrick Scholarship Fund at Columbia College (the successor name for Christian College),1001 Rogers Street, Columbia MO 65216 or The Fellowship of John at Foxwood Springs Living Center, P.O. Box 701, Raymore MO 64083.