Lena Bourne Ritchie

She was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia at the family farm, to George and Cora Bourne. Thanks to her parents, she was imbued with a deep love of family, a wonderful sense of humor, a wide-ranging curiosity, and lifelong love of learning. She attended high school in Blackstone, Virginia, graduated from Madison College (now James Madison University) with a degree in Home Economics, and married Ray Miller Ritchie, Jr., who was her husband and friend for 60 years, until his death in 2004.

Lena was a loving mother to her four children, and became an adopted mother and nurturer to hundreds of other people in her many activities in church, schools, and community over the years, seeming to enlarge her family wherever she went. She was an active member of Avent Ferry United Methodist Church, where she held many church offices, and served as a teacher, volunteer office support, and church historian for more than 50 years. She was a leader in the United Methodist Women, both at the local and district levels, a continual hostess and defacto hospitality chairperson, organizer of yard sales and countless other fund-raising events, and a worker in the Kids Café after-school program.

After her own children were school age, Lena decided to apply her love of books by taking herself back to school, earning a certification in Library Science from the University of North Carolina. She then began a career as an elementary school librarian in several schools in the Raleigh area, including the Mount Vernon-Goodwin and Stough schools.

She loved gardening, flowers, and birds, and was one of the earliest members and a past president of the Petal Pushers Garden Club, a member of the Homemakers Club, the Woman's Club of Raleigh, and served for a time as a docent at the North Carolina Governor's Mansion. She was an avid collector of antiques and follower of yard sales, and for several years ran her own small antiques business, Mother Hubbard's Cupboard.

Continuing her love of learning, Lena took computer classes in her seventies, and classes in creative writing and writing your life story in her eighties, finally writing her autobiography, documenting it with photographs and colorful stories, and confounding her family with her ability to remember the small details of life eighty years earlier.

Lena taught her family lessons about facing life and facing death. She faced her death with a sense of peace, but continued to live her life as fully as possible, enjoying her birds and garden from her bed, and receiving many dozens of visitors throughout the last weeks of her life. She died at home, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

Lena is survived by her children, Kay Jordan and her husband, the Rev. Raymond Craig Jordan, of Nesbit, Mississippi; Ray Ritchie and his wife Anita Thomas Ritchie, of Freehold, New Jersey; Linda Ritchie Watson and her husband Joel Watson, of Raleigh; and Bob Ritchie and his wife Leatha, of Raleigh. She is survived by eight grandchildren: Michael Jordan, of Plano, Texas; Christina Ritchie, of Atlanta, Georgia; Rebekah Jordan Gienapp, of Memphis, Tennessee; Adam Ritchie, of Braintree, Massachusetts; Dana Watson, of Durham; Zack Watson, of Zebulon; Laura Ritchie, of Raleigh; and Matt Ritchie, of Raleigh. She has three great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be held Tuesday, April 12th at Avent Ferry United Methodist Church, at 11AM. There will be a visitation at Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, 300 St. Mary's Street Raleigh, from 7 to 9 PM Monday.

Memorial gifts, if desired, may be made to Avent Ferry United Methodist Church, and to Hospice of Wake County.