Sarah Ford

Sarah Elizabeth Ford, known affectionately as Aunt Totsie, passed away December 30, 2018. The service will be 1:00 p.m., Thursday, January 3, 2019, at Waco Memorial Park Mausoleum Chapel with burial to follow at Waco Memorial Park. Sarah was born April 5, 1919, to Elmer Angelo Wilder and Grace Baugh Wilder in Brownwood, Texas. She was the oldest of 7 children and is predeceased in death by her sisters, Bonnie Jean Huffman and Helen Ruth Schmidt; and brothers, James Henry Wilder and Daniel Mosely Wilder. Surviving brothers include Richard Edward Wilder and E.A. Wilder, Jr. She had 16 nieces and nephews, and many great-nieces and nephews, and even great-great nieces and nephews. Sarah loved her family and was very dedicated to all. Sarah graduated high school in 1937, and went on to Howard Payne University in Brownwood, where she went to school to learn the skills that would prepare her to work as a secretary. She worked at Camp Bowie, a military training center during World War II that opened in 1940, and when the facility closed in 1946, she moved to San Antonio where she worked at Fort Sam Houston. She married Alvin Ford, and they never had any children. After her divorce in the 1960s, Sarah moved to Waco to be near her sister, Jean, and their mother and went to work for the Veterans Administration Regional Office there. She retired from Civil Service and upon Jean’s death in 1991, she moved to Katy to be near her youngest brother, Dick and his wife, Cindy. Together, they advised and provided loving companionship and assistance over the next 20 years, and she settled near them in their move to Sealy. In 2011, her niece and namesake Sarah Elizabeth Guffey brought her to live at First Colony Health and Rehabilitation in Sugar Land, where she was a resident until her death on December 30, 2018. The family would like to thank the staff of that facility for their excellent care of her. Sarah was a woman of faith and a proud and one-time active member of the United Methodist church in all the cities that she lived. She always enjoyed going to church and Sunday school, studying the Bible, and was a living testimony of God’s love and grace. Sarah has taken her seat among her mother and father, brothers and sisters in faith in heaven. “Praise be to God, Amen!" The family invites you to leave a message or memory in our “Tribute Wall” at www.WHBfamily.com.