Sadie Jo Black ’50, Dec. 5 at the age of 80. A longtime supporter of Baylor and the Baylor Alumni Association, she earned a master’s degree from Colorado State University and taught at Mexia High School before returning to Baylor, where she was an assistant professor of home economics for 35 years, retiring in 1992. She was a member of the Old Main Society, the Baylor Bear Foundation, and the Armstrong Browning Library Guardian Angels, and she received the James Huckins and Pat Neff medallions and was on the President’s Scholarship Initiative Steering Committee. A member of Waco’s First Baptist Church, she created an endowed fund for Baylor undergraduate students in medical research in 2007. Survivors include several cousins. Gifts may be made to the Sadie Jo Black Endowed Scholarship Fund.
Sadie Jo was a great and generous lady. She was a good friend and loved her friends. She really loved Baylor and the Baylor Alumni Association. She was very philanthropic, and she gave tirelessly. When she was working as a professor of home economics at Baylor, Sadie Jo was always the first to volunteer or accept a task that the university might ask of her for various types of organizations on campus.
Even though her health prevented her from being involved in different events after she retired, she still was able to lend her voice and lend her name to different things on campus. She helped open doors and create opportunities, and she certainly stepped up and gave her own money.
Sadie Jo always believed in leading by example. Talk was not what she needed from people so much as actions. She really encouraged people to be very accountable and and to be action oriented.
She was a dear friend to me, and I will very much miss her. But I am very grateful that the Lord found a place for her and that she’s not hurting and is not sick any longer. Sadie Jo is with the Lord, and that’s a good comfort.
—Gary Parker, Waco
