Elizabeth Vardaman lived quietly at home in Greenwood for 35 years, but she was an outward-looking person, all the same.
Miss Vardaman died Friday, at Greenwood Leflore Hospital. She was almost 101 and would have celebrated her birthday last Sunday.
Her niece Martha Darnell, who lived with Miss Vardaman at their home on Grand Boulevard, said "Liz" had what appeared to be a stroke several weeks ago, but she was intellectually sharp, unwaveringly curious and hardly ever ill until she slipped away.
"Liz was reading until really about a month ago. She was amazing."
And she was certain about how she wanted to live, which included arrangements about what would happen after she died.
Her body would be turned over to the University Medical Center to help students learn. That is what has happened, and there will be no funeral.
But people who knew Miss Vardaman - longtime friends and others who met her later in life - have been thinking about the pleasure of having known her.
John Pittman, president of Planter's Bank in Greenwood, and his wife, Kathryn, became especially friendly with Miss Vardaman when the bank began leasing her property for its branch on West Park Avenue.
During the winter holidays last year, the Pittmans were among the hosts for a 100th birthday reception honoring Miss Vardaman.
John Pittman said he enjoyed and admired her "wealth of knowledge on many subjects, including historical things around town."
Miss Vardaman easily remembered the days when Grand Boulevard was development. Her home was one of the first built there.
Granville Jordan of Greenwood remembered Miss Vardaman as his Latin teacher at Greenwood High School. He thought she was old then, but she probably wasn't. He said she was kind to her students.
"I think she was a little generous in her grading," Jordan said.
Miss Vardaman also taught Greek, Darnell said.
Her aunt graduated from the University of Mississippi, continued there in a graduate program, and she spent a summer in the 1920s studying at the University of Chicago.
She moved to Hattiesburg and was periodicals librarian at the University of Southern Mississippi. She always read at least two newspapers a day, the Commercial Appeal and the Greenwood Commonwealth.
Her uncle, James K. Vardaman, started the Commonwealth in 1896. He became a U.S. senator and Mississippi governor.
Miss Vardaman's father, Will S. Vardaman, twice served as Greenwood's mayor.
"The important thing about Liz is that she was interested in people and animals, really animals more than people," Darnell said. Any memorials ought to go to the Humane Society or to victims of the recent hurricanes, she said.
Miss Vardaman is also survived by a sister, Betsy Teague of Plano, Texas, and Darnell's daughter, Katharine Muller of Atlanta.
Darnell said Miss Vardaman lived fully, even when hospitalized.
"She had fondness for red tennis shoes, said Darnell, referring to a 1948 movie about a ballerina, "The Red Shoes."
"She was up on the fifth floor, subacute, when she died. She had a new pair of red tennis shoes," Darnell said.
"She had lived a wonderful life, and I believe she thought it was time to make an exit."
