Obituaries

Wilhelmina Patterson LasleyTeacher

Wilhelmina Patterson Lasley, 77, a retired Prince George's County reading specialist, died of a heart attack Jan. 19 at the Knollwood retirement residence in Washington, where she lived.

Mrs. Lasley was born in Windsor, N.C., and graduated from Virginia State University in 1951. After her marriage in 1952, she accompanied her husband on a series of Army postings in the United States and Germany and traveled extensively throughout Europe.

Mrs. Lasley settled in Landover in 1965 and taught initially at Pershing Hill Elementary School in Fort Meade. After receiving a master's degree in education from the University of Maryland in the late 1960s, she became a reading specialist in the Prince George's public schools, including Marlton and Hillcrest Heights elementary schools.

From 1979 until her retirement in 1993, she taught at Tulip Grove Elementary School in Bowie. She received a teacher-of-the-year award in 1990.

Mrs. Lasley lived in Mitchellville from 1979 until 2006 and was an officer with the local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, an honor society for female educators. In retirement, she tutored students and organized scholarship programs through her church, the First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover, where she was a deaconess. More recently, she was a member of the Woodstream Church in Mitchellville.

She enjoyed travel and visited Alaska last summer.

Her husband, retired Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Oliver Lasley, died in 1979.

Survivors include two children, Corlis Lasley Sellers of Voorhees, N.J., and Oliver "Jeff" Lasley Jr. of Los Angeles; a brother; three grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.

-- Matt Schudel