On Oct. 16, 2014 the world lost one of its brightest lights. Flora Chamberlain, who was born Flora Lea Schwartz July 14, 1947, was
taken tragically and suddenly.
Flora grew up in Chicago Ill., the oldest daughter of Miriam and Joe Schwartz. During her time in Chicago, she attended and graduated from Roosevelt High School.
At the time of her death, she was working on a 50-year reunion committee for Roosevelt.
She ran an Internet blog where she kept former members of her high school up to date on the comings and goings of each other.
After high school, Flora worked for the phone company until completing a teaching degree at North Eastern Illinois University. Flora continued teaching both professionally and on a volunteer basis for the rest of her life, and eventually went on to receive a master’s degree in education.
In 1973 Flora married the love of her life, Bill, and during their four-and-a-half decades together raised a family consisting of three daughters, three grandchildren and multiple grand-dogs.
In 1978 Flora and Bill moved their family to southern California, and it was there that Flora’s passion for volunteer work blossomed. She was the member of multiple charities, including the Conejo Valley Free Clinic where she ran auctions and held fundraisers and an organization known as Binki Patrol where she crocheted blankets for premature infants.
In 2004 Flora and Bill moved to lower Alabama where Flora continued to teach and volunteer.
Flora touched so many lives in a positive way through her volunteer work, organizing fundraisers, collecting donation items and just going door to door, email to email and phone call to phone call, getting the word out about whatever cause she was spearheading.
While in Alabama she spent her time volunteering with Mercy Medical, making cards for soldiers overseas, running craft groups at the senior center, baking for SELF and collecting blankets for the local animal shelters.
Through all of her charitable acts, however, Flora would tell you that the most important thing in her life was her family. Her husband, children, siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins and their children and grandchildren were the center of her existence. If you asked her to name her greatest accomplishments, she would show you pictures of her family and tell you that their happiness and wellbeing meant more to her than anything else in the world.
Flora will be missed by so many people, and her absence will be felt by so many organizations it would be impossible to name them all. Her time, her energy and her spirit can never be reproduced, but her memory will live on in all of us and her countless acts of selfless kindness will be felt for years and years and years to come.
Flora is survived by her loving husband of 42 years, Bill Chamberlain; daughters, Melissa Lewis, Victoria Smith and Jennifer Howley; brother, Gary Schwartz; sister, Myra Herrmann; grandchildren, Parker, Sienna and Blake; and cousin and best friend, Lynne Ohren.
A memorial service will be held at Wolfe-Bayview Funeral Home in Fairhope on Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014, at 3 p.m.
Contributions in memory of Flora Chamberlain can be made to Mercy Medical Development Office, P.O. Box 1090, Daphne, AL 36526 (www.mercymedical.com), or the North Baldwin County Animal Shelter, P.O. Box 190, Bay Minette, AL 36507 (www.northbaldwinanimalshelter.com).
Arrangements by Wolfe-Bayview Funeral Home, Fairhope.
