Elizabeth Furlow died of leukemia December 18, 2018 at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Fl.
Elizabeth “Libby” Truitt Furlow was born in Washington, Georgia on 12/8/33 to Minnie Fortson Truitt and Horace Truitt. She grew up in Madison, Georgia, and graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia in 1955. After teaching high school in Savannah for a year and concluding an eight-year, long-distance courtship she married Leonard Furlow, Jr. several weeks after his graduation from Washington University Medical School in St Louis. They were married for 62 happy years. They had three children, Elizabeth (Beth), Trey, and John Furlow, and four granddaughters: Eva, Tessa, Lila, and Sadie Furlow.
From the time the family arrived in Gainesville in 1961, Libby volunteered at the First United Methodist Church. She has been a member of several organizations including her Garden Club and the Florida Museum of Natural History, where she was a docent for 56 years and a board member for 53 years, For over a decade she cleaned up the Museum’s Butterfly Rainforest each Thursday morning, sometimes with help from her granddaughters.
For the two years before her husband retired, she worked in his plastic surgery office. After he retired she accompanied him on some 50 volunteer surgery trips around the world, working in the operating rooms, clinics, or keeping the patients and their families comfortable.
She was a beautiful, thoughtful, generous, precious person. She will be painfully missed by her family, her many friends, and especially by her husband, who loves her immeasurably and forever.
A memorial service will be held 11 AM December 21, 2018 at First United Methodist Church of Gainesville. Later in the spring, the family will hold a small burial at the family cemetery plot in Madison Ga.
The Family suggests memorials to: The Florida Museum of Natural History and The Cade Museum.
