Sally Burke Lauderdale

Sally Swan Burke Lauderdale, 97, of Zebina, passed away Thursday morning, January 17, 2026, at the Keysville Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center.

The family will receive friends at Ebenezer Community Church, formerly Ebenezer ARP Church, at 1 p.m. on Friday, January 23, followed by the funeral service at 2 p.m. with the Rev. David Nowling officiating. Interment will follow in the church cemetery.

Sally was born on October 15, 1928 in the Zebina community to the late Horace Attaway Burke and the late Lois Eugenia Swan Burke. She was a granddaughter of the late William Andrew Burke and Susannah Attaway Burke; and the late Andrew Lawson Swan and Sallie Mozelle Wren Swan, all of Zebina.

She was reared in Atlanta, where she was a member of the First Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, a Girl Scout, and associate editor of the newspaper at Girls High School.

At Erskine College in Due West SC, Sally was the first female editor of the Erskine Mirror.

Sally married to George S. Lauderdale of Lexington, Va., with the union lasting 67 years until his passing in 2017. When they wed in September 1949, she was beginning her senior year at Erskine and he entered Erskine Seminary.

He served churches in York County, S.C., and Lexington while Sally had three children in three-and-a-half years.

They lived in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Va., where she taught first grade at a Christian school.

After moving to Atlanta in 1963, she taught two years in a Christian school, was a bookkeeper and writer for a local mission, and distributed Successful Living books for 27 years.  She was a member of First Christian Missionary Alliance Church, where she taught primary-age Sunday School for 20 years.

Sally accompanied her husband on a number of short-term mission trips that included England, Israel, India and a semester of teaching school in China.

In her home, she hosted weekly Bible studies and a steady stream of missionaries, including international workers with Operation Mobilization. Visitors also included the elderly, the lonely and people down on their luck or new to town, and included the long-term housing of mother-and-daughter refugees from Cuba.

She aided every facet of her husband’s independent missions ministry, including editing his “WordSing” translation of the Bible into rhyming, metered verse. After his passing, she got an iMac computer and published a weekly devotional online.

They moved from Atlanta to her family’s farm in Zebina outside Wrens in 1985.

Here, for 10 years she taught classes singlehandedly for as many as 50 children from breakfast to lunch during annual weeklong gatherings at the Mt. Mariah Campground in Matthews. She taught the adult Sunday school class at Ebenezer A.R. Presbyterian Church for a decade, going through the entire Bible virtually verse by verse. Her last lesson was the week she turned 90.

Sally was president of the Louisville Garden Club in the year that it led the re-landscaping of the Jefferson County Courthouse.

She was a charter member of the Arts Guild of Jefferson County in 2002, and relished working with other artists and exhibiting her oil and watercolor paintings in its annual show.  Art was an important outlet for Sally. One of her specialties was painting wedding invitations as a gift to brides.

She was an outstanding singer, cook, seamstress and a lover of nature who planted a tree in her yard named for each grandchild.  She was also a family genealogist and meticulous keeper of documents important to her family’s story.

Sally was seen in her family as a role model of grace, charm, intelligence and beauty. Asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said, “She loved Jesus and she loved her family.”

The family wishes to thank the staff at the Keysville Nursing Home and the church groups and individuals who cared for her over many years.

Surviving are her children, George S. Lauderdale Jr. of Cumming, Lois Ann Lauderdale Hopson (Craig) of Salt Lake City, Utah, and David Burke Lauderdale (Sybil) of Hilton Head Island, S.C.; six grandchildren, Peter David Hopson, Sarah Jean Hopson, Bethany Ann Hopson Daly, Rachel Lea Hopson Hardy (Andrew), David Burke Lauderdale Jr. (April), and Ann Talley Lauderdale Zeedyk (Nate); five great-grandchildren, Isla Daly, Mary Daly, Stella Hardy, Esme Hardy, and Bram Lauderdale; five nephews and eight nieces and other extended family.

Sally was also preceded in death by her sister, Anita Burke Creel.

The family respectfully requests that in lieu of flowers memorial contributions be made to the church she loved and supported--Ebenezer Community Church, c/o Anita Trujillo, 6199 Zebina Road, Wrens, GA  30833.