Sally Prosser Verner was a hometown débutante born in 1929, just five weeks after the Great Depression’s Stock Market Crash, as an only child to Lew and Vaviel Prosser.
Growing up in Plant City through the depression, Sally often spoke of how her mother and father stressed remaining humble and generous, and she recalled them anonymously providing food or employment as best they could to many in need. Her father also stressed his belief that anyone gifted with being smart, therefore having a duty to work hard, and she embodied that lesson.
Sally graduated Plant City High School as Valedictorian and a cheerleader of the class of 1947, where D.E. Bailey was principal, spending some summers studying in New York at the School of American Ballet. Upon graduation, she went on to college at Duke University, where she earned a Phi Beta Kappa Key, was an auditioned singer in the Duke Chapel Choir, pledged Tri-Delt sorority, danced the leading role in the Hoof and Horn annual production, and was twice elected cheerleader. While at Duke, she met her husband John at a school dance, where she admitted she was playing a bit ditzy to avoid her usual label as the smartest girl in class. They both are quoted as saying his pickup line to her when cutting in was “why does a smart girl like you want to act so dumb?” They talked all evening and fell in love immediately and permanently. Within a few weeks, they came to Plant City, where she was announced in the Courier, and they soon married at Plant City’s FUMC in August of 1950. The reception at the Prosser home afterwards was reported to be hot as blazes, but sporting chilled champagne, perhaps the first such wedding reception occurrence in town.
The newlyweds returned to Duke, where John completed his medical education. He often credited Sally with polishing his study habits and making him work to be more than a good doctor, but the best doctor. He became the Duke Medical School Chief Resident for nearly 10 years while Sally mothered three of their eventual four children, Sally Lew, Vic, and James. While in Durham, Sally joined the Junior League, served as President of the Duke Medical Dames, on the board of the Durham County Heart Association, as a PTA officer, Cub Scout leader, Sunday School teacher, and co-founder of the Durham County Republican Women’s Association.
When Sally and Dr. John moved to Lakeland, in the early 1960s, their fourth child, Ed, was born shortly after, and Sally continued her work in the Junior League and became its Lakeland President, also serving for 8 years on the board and executive committee of the United Way. She was for many years on the executive committee of the Needlework Guild Children’s Services and was a founding board member of the Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine.
In her “spare” time, Sally also toured with Taproot Theater, a drama program for public schools, was a devotee and supporter of Lakeland’s Imperial Symphony Orchestra, serving on its board, and received an honorary doctorate degree from Florida Southern College, where she had been a member of the President’s and Fine Arts Councils and a concert scholarship sponsor. Her hobbies included tennis, bridge, backpacking, snow skiing, and being a model for local stores and charity events. She was an avid exercise fan, a substitute step aerobics instructor, and a frequent world traveler with husband John, circling the globe four times, sometimes with children or grandchildren along.
Worshipping at the First United Methodist Church of Lakeland, Sally became a Trustee and a member of the Administrative Board. But a sudden, tragic death of son, Vic, in 1981 prompted her, as she dealt with her grief, to notice a need within the church, inspiring her to design and create a program there for lay Care Group visitation and bereavement ministries. She chaired and grew that mission for 16 years until she and Dr. John returned to Plant City to live once again in her ancestral family home on Calhoun St., where she began the same ministry in FUMC of Plant City, continuing to chair it for many more years until Dr. John’s health needs required her to pass it on.
In her later days, she desired it to be known her favorite quote was: ‘God has numbered my days, but only I can make them count,’ one of many paraphrases of Psalm 90:12.
She died peacefully last Sunday at her childhood home in Plant City, exactly on her 96th birthday, having embodied her favorite quote. thday This Past Sunday
