She was the middle child of three with an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Orville Jr. (always known as “Buck”) to parents Orville and Geneva Buchanan. She graduated from Louisiana High School where she was active in the girls’ basketball team, the school’s glee club, and played the drum in the Drum and Bugle Corp. She lived in this small town for 22 years and never imagined where life would take her.
In 1945, she moved to Kansas City to work as a secretary. One day while heading home to her apartment on the Plaza (the old Locarno on Ward Parkway which is still standing), a man approached asking directions to her apartment building. She gave him the information and was a bit stunned when he later rang her door bell asking for her roommate. Too bad her roommate wasn’t ready for her date. Woody and Louise were married shortly after the end of World War II in 1946. It would be a marriage that would last 57 years.
They started life out on a farm in Grandview, had three children: Jayne, John and Marti, and in 1952 moved ‘into town’, as they called it. Actually, moving into town meant Mission Hills. Quite a change from a small town upbringing in Louisiana, Missouri.
While Woody pursued building his construction company, Louise learned the art of being a rising businessman’s wife. She was elegant, kind, straight-forward, and lovely. She cultivated friendships with a dozen or so women who helped her learn the art of entertaining and decorating. These women, all part of a weekly sewing group, were her best friends for life. They were each other’s mentors, shopping partners, lunch companions, bridge partners, and confidants for almost 60 years. Remarkable to have a group of friends who could be depended on for love, support, and friendship through so many years. She was the last of them and she missed them until the day she left us.
With her husband, she traveled the world: From Alaska to Acapulco, the Far East to Europe, and almost every major city in the U.S. While she met four Presidents and Hollywood stars such as Florence Henderson and Charlie Chaplin, and rode in a pace car at the Indianapolis 500, she always enjoyed family events including the annual Bennett Family Christmas Party. She pursued painting and became a very good landscape painter. Her paintings are keepsakes and treasured by family members. On a trip to New Orleans she stopped in an antique shop and discovered oyster plates. She collected over 75 in all her travels. These plates range from ceramic to Limoges, each one different, each one telling a story of a different place, time and city.
Louise shared a great life with Woody. She took time for family and friends and enjoyed their shared adventures. Louise will be remembered in our hearts for her loving ways, her quick retorts, her charm, her beauty and her elegance.
Her parents, Orville and Geneva Buchanan, her husband, Woodrow W. Bennett, and her daughter, Jayne Bennett-Taylor, preceded Louise in death, as did her sister and brother-in-law, Helen and Jack McFadden, and her brother and sister-in-law, Orville and Gail Buchanan.
Remembering her are her son, John W. Bennett, her daughter and son-in-law, Marti and Harry Peel, grandchildren Dr. Mark Taylor (Jackie), Pamela Taylor, Alan Peel and Christopher Peel, many great grandchildren, family and friends.
Suggested remembrances in her name are the Shriner’s Hospitals and Ascend Hospice Care.
Ascend Hospice, 4550 West 109th Street, Suite 210, Overland Park, Kansas 66211; 913-287-5678; http://ascendhospice.com
Shriners Hospitals for Children, 2900 Rocky Point Drive, Tampa, Florida 33607; (844) 739-0849;
http://shfc.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=give_Ways_to_Give
Private services were held shortly after her passing.
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