Roseann Smith Lankford, elementary teacher

Roseann Smith Lankford became a teacher, in part, because "a doctor told her that she would never be able to have children," said a son, Andrew.

"But she wanted to work with young children," so teaching elementary school classes was her obvious choice.

"The pregnancy of my twin brother and I was a shock" because of her internal impairment, Andrew said of him and his twin, Kevin.

Mrs. Lankford, 71, of Mount Laurel, who retired in the early 2000s as a teacher at Blackwood Elementary School in Gloucester Township, died Saturday, Sept. 12, of cancer at Virtua Marlton Hospital.

"When she got pregnant, she asked me to be her coach and to be in the delivery room," Arlene Stolarick, a retired registered nurse, recalled.

"We were very close after that."

Stolarick did not know Mrs. Lankford in the classroom, she said, but "I could tell what kind of teacher she was, the way she raised her sons."

Born in Camden, Mrs. Lankford graduated from Camden Catholic High School in 1963. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1967 and a master's as a teaching specialist in reading and math in 1971, both at what is now Rowan University.

Beginning right after she earned her bachelor's degree, her son said, Mrs. Lankford spent her teaching career at Blackwood Elementary.

"It was her first job when she got out of school," her son said. "Her first and only."

Mrs. Lankford was a second-grade teacher for only the early years at Blackwood.

"When she got her master's, she became a reading and math specialist, for all the grades," her son said.

When students "were not meeting the state test-score requirements," he said, "she would work with them so their level would get up."

Teaching, Andrew Lankford said, "ran in the family."

Not only was her mother a teacher, but her brother, William Smith, was an educator for 40 years in Camden County.

"He was initially a sixth-grade teacher" in the city of Camden and in Oaklyn, Andrew Lankford said, and then became an elementary school principal in Deptford and in Lindenwold.

A member of the Red Hat Society, Mrs. Lankford was a volunteer in her last year for the Cherry Hill office of the Scleroderma Foundation, her son said.

For the last three years, she was a weekly volunteer for the Breast Cancer Support and Education Group at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mount Holly.

Besides sons Andrew and Kevin and her brother, Mrs. Lankford is survived by her husband, William A.; stepsons William A. Jr. and Brian; and three grandchildren.

A viewing was set from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, at the Bradley Funeral Home, 601 Route 73 South, Marlton, with a Funeral Mass at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 18, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Roman Catholic Church, 42 W. Main St., Moorestown. Interment will be in Calvary Cemetery, Cherry Hill.

Donations may be sent to www.komen.org.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.bradleyfuneralhome-marlton.com.

610-313-8134@WNaedele