By Rosanna Trestman
No fewer than 350 people filled Norfolk’s Church of Christ Congregational on a cold but sparkling Saturday early last month. The impressive turnout gathered to pay tribute to Sarah Crocker Garrison who died December 18, at age 75.

Sarah Garrison

What unfolded inside was a long and moving celebration of her life. The service was followed by a reception in the chapel at which the many women of Norfolk who had worked with her on town projects contributed all the sweets at a table that stretched 30 feet long.
Sarah and Lloyd Garrison moved permanently from New York to Norfolk 13 years ago, ostensibly to retire. But retirement was not in Sarah Garrison’s nature. She made herself indispensable to many town committees and causes, including Battell Stoeckel Associates, which supports the Norfolk Music Festival, and the Library Associates, where she used her considerable persuasive powers in luring noted artists and musicians to Norfolk. As a member of Norfolk Community Associates, she was responsible for keeping the flowers around Station Place blooming. She was also the cellist of the Trillium Trio, Norfolk’s own chamber music group, and in recent years volunteered to teach the cello to students at Botelle.
A 1956 graduate of Radcliffe, she went on to teach grade school in New York and later acquired two masters’ degrees from Columbia University, becoming a specialist in teaching children with dyslexia. During six years in Africa in which her husband was a foreign correspondent, Garrison taught English to Moslem women in Lagos, while shouldering many responsibilities during the tumulus times during the Congo mutiny for independence.
A friend and colleague of many years summed up his impressions: “Sarah was a saint. She bore the aches and pains of living with a traveling journalist and trying to raise a family in often strange and primitive surroundings…But she never griped as some journalist’s wives did. I always admired her guts and spirit. She had a beauty, inside and out, that shone.”

A brunch at Battell Chapel.

Photos by Bruce Frisch