Sara H. Lamar

A native of Denton, North Carolina, and the daughter of Howell and Gertrude Harrison, she earned her undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University and, years later, a masters’ degree from Florida State University. She migrated to Florida shortly after marrying Sam Solomon Lamar in 1953. The two were married for 58 years before he died in 2011.

Sara Ivey spent 36 years teaching English, journalism, literature, and all-around awesomeness in public schools across the Florida panhandle. Following stops in Century, Marianna, and Quincy, she accepted a job at Leon High School in 1968 where she allowed her students to call her Aunt Sara or even Sexy Sara. She embraced another nickname – calling herself the Wicked Witch of the Third Floor and warning students on the first day of class: “This is not a democracy. This is a benevolent dictatorship.”

Aunt Sara was loved and respected for her ability to connect with students and spark their passion for literature and critical thinking. Her students were graded not on their ability to answer multiple-choice questions, but on their contributions to class discussions and their written essays. A misspelled word often resulted in an “F” grade because, as she said, “You know how to use a dictionary.” She often fictionalized selections of required readings to ask students if they agreed with the author’s choices, pouncing on the poor souls who outed themselves as non-readers.

Her third-floor classroom at Leon featured a loaded squirt gun in her top desk drawer used on students who dared to fall asleep, a caricature drawn by a student showing her in a t-shirt that read “Sexy and 70,” and a sign hung over the pencil sharpener that read, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me."

The squirt gun was formally retired in 1989 and the t-shirt was updated to read “Sexy and 91” on Feb. 18, 2022. The whereabouts of the whips and chains remain unknown.

Sara Ivey was also a one-time basketball coach, the original carpool karaoke performer (Petuila Clark’s “Downtown” was her go-to song), and a semi-pro water ballet performer. In 1983, she was named Leon County’s Teacher of the Year – an honor that earned her $500 she quickly spent on a VCR so she could record FSU sporting events and afternoon soap operas.

Following her retirement from Leon County Schools, she spent three years teaching in the English Education department at Florida State University.

In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death by a brother (Jim Harrison of Lexington, N.C.), a sister (Jane Harrison Alexander of Elon, N.C.), a son (William Lucious Lamar III), and a granddaughter (Sara Louise Lamar of Cathedral City, Ca.).

She is survived by brothers Pat Harrison (Wallburg, N.C.) and John Harrison (Garner, N.C.), and sons Sam H. Lamar of Tallahassee, (son David and wife Suzy and children Jeremiah, Cash, Preslee, Caden, and Hudson of Lompoc, Ca.), Bill Lamar of Clyde, N.C. (wife Lynn and children Luke and Anna), Pat Lamar of Edgewater, and Jim Lamar of Tallahassee (wife Peggy and children Quin, Josh, and Max).

A memorial service will be held at First Presbyterian Church of Tallahassee at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 28. Though not expressly forbidden by church bylaws, attendees are strongly advised to leave their squirt guns at home. (As she repeatedly told her sons, “Take it outside.”)

A graveside service will be held in Denton, N.C., in June where squirt guns will most assuredly be encouraged.

For those inclined to send flowers or some other form of remembrance, please consider instead a donation to the Sara Lamar Fund with the Leon High School Foundation. Money collected will be used to add a monetary supplement to the Sara Lamar Award that is annually given to the top English student in Leon’s graduating class.

To donate to the fund, please send a check payable to the Leon High School Foundation to: Leon High School Foundation, P.O. Box 15963, Tallahassee, FL 32317. In the notes field on the check, please put “Sara Lamar Fund.”

Another, and more personal, tribute can be made by simply picking up a book and reading. She loved William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Toni Morrison – and the occasional trashy romance novel (but don’t tell anyone you learned that secret). If you want to earn bonus points on her final exam, read or re-read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Cold Sassy Tree.”

In lieu of those options, perhaps consider starting a squirt gun fight with an unsuspecting friend or rolling down your car windows at a stop light and singing your favorite song at the top of your lungs.

Or, simply join her family, friends, and thousands of former students in saying: Long live the Wicked Witch of the Third Floor.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.CulleysMeadowWood.com for the Lamar family.