Retired educator Christine A.R. Waller of Richmond dies

Christine Amelia Ruffin Waller, who died of lung cancer Saturday at home in Richmond, was born 82 years ago in Reedville, one of three children of a minister-educator and his wife.

Growing up near the water, she graduated in 1942 from Julius Rosenwald High School, where her father was principal.

African-Americans in the area raised more than $7,000 to build the school, which opened as Northumberland County Training School, seven years before her birth. With additional funding from the Rosenwald Fund, created by Sears, Roebuck & Co. Chairman Julius Rosenwald to finance building of rural Southern schools for blacks, it became, in 1932, one of 308 Rosenwald schools in Virginia and one of about 5,000 in the South.

Mrs. Waller majored in English at Virginia Union University, where she graduated in 1946.

She began teaching English the same year at A.T. Johnson High School in Westmoreland County. "The students were older than she was, but I don't think there was any problem with discipline," said her husband, Irvin S. Waller, whom she married in 1947.

After teaching at an elementary school in Northumberland County, she taught for a year at Julius Rosenwald High School before moving to Richmond.

She worked for the Richmond Department of Social Services, where she retired as a supervisor with children in foster homes around 1979 or 1980, her husband said.

Mrs. Waller was a member of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she had been active in the missionary circle. She also was a member of Eta Phi Beta Sorority Inc.

In addition to her husband, survivors include three sons, Morton Waller, aka Muhammed Shabazz, Ruffin Waller and Tyrone Waller, all of Richmond; and nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

A funeral was held Wednesday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 216 W. Leigh St. Entombment was in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Richmond.

Contact Ellen Robertson at (804) 649-6115 or .