Yvonne Chandler Ludwig

Yvonne was born on Thursday, 17 October 1929, at the P&S Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Her parents were Lorine Kauffman Chandler, a prominent florist, and Percy Chandler, postal employee and wholesale florist. She has been preceded in death by her father in 1951, her mother in 1981, and by her beloved husband, Lester Frank Ludwig, Sr., retired City Water Board supervisor, organizer of the Retired City Water Board Group and owner of plant and landscape architecture firm Special Services, in 2023. She is survived by sons Lester F. Ludwig, Jr., Ph.D. of San Antonio and Belmont California, and Bradley W. Ludwig of Vance, South Carolina, his wife, and grandchildren Ashlynne and Remington.

Born during the depression, she and her family lived through bank failures, fire and flood. She was a child professional stage dancer for Earle Cobb Studios and during World War II volunteered to entertain soldiers after school with dance shows at military bases around San Antonio. She served as Worthy Advisor in the Blue Star Chapter of the Rainbow for Girls, was a floral designer and bookkeeper in her mother's floral shop, and served as Sunday School Superintendent and kindergarten teacher at Jefferson Methodist Church. She was a highly devoted self-sacrificing mother to her children and always a cheerful, helpful, and beloved member of her extended family. She was a very patriotic person who believed in people and felt God put each of us on this earth for a purpose. She spent a great deal of time with her husband in the Texas hill country hunting and was a respected (and feared) domino player.

In 1967 she wrote her first book, Science in the Kindergarten, donating profits to the Association for Childhood Education which later honored her as Teacher of the Year. She was employed by the San Antonio Independent School District as a substitute teacher and later as Special Education teacher’s aid until her retirement. She was affectionally known throughout by her many very young students as “Miss Bonnie.”

As a genealogist and highly respected local-area Texan town-settlement historian she obtained the first Historical Cemetery Site Designation in Medina County, held a grave sanctification and successfully attained and dedicated many Texas Historical Markers in both Bexar and Medina Counties. She and her husband extensively researched local Texas history, their own extensive local and Alsace/Loraine ancestry, and the ancestry and lore of prominent local-area Texan families. She and her husband additionally cleaned, repaired, purchased, and replaced many tombstones of their ancestors and many others. She wrote and published six books on local-area history, her last book winning the Conservation Society Award for Historical Preservation. She donated copies of her books to many area libraries in both the U.S. and France to preserve history. Yvonne was well recognized by newspapers for her research expertise and wrote many informative articles. As a life member of the Castro Colonies Heritage Association, she devotedly published an internationally-subscribed newsletter from which stories have been taken and published in many genealogy magazines and international newsletters.

She served on the Board of many organizations as Life member of Texas State Florist Association, San Antonio School Archives Association, San Antonio Retired Teachers Association, Castro Colonies Heritage Association and the Brackenridge Eagles Alumni Association and as member of Daughters of the Republic of Texas, The Southwestern Texas Genealogy Association, German Texan Heritage Association, St. John's Historical Society, Friends of Landmark Inn, Save Texas Cemeteries, Sons of Hermann and The Alsatian Language Club. She was involved in establishing three area museums: one on history, another on San Antonio schools, and a third on church.

Visitation will be held at 10:00 a.m. Monday September 8, 2025, at Porter Loring Mortuary, 1101 McCullough Avenue, followed by public remembrance services at 11am. Her interment, next to her beloved husband, will follow at 2:00 p.m. in Mission Burial Park South 1170 S.E. Military Dr.