SUSAN JAYNE WHITEMAN HESTIR,

80, died Saturday, March 16, 2024 in Little Rock, Ark. Susan was born in Dallas, Texas on November 9, 1943 to Thomas D. Whiteman and Patricia Kathleen Clark Whiteman. The Whiteman family moved to Little Rock when Susan was four years old. She attended Pulaski Heights and Forest Heights schools, and graduated from Hall High School in 1961. She is survived by her daughter Jennifer Lenox Hestir Begier; son-in-law Michael Joseph Begier; son Blake Edward Hestir; and her sisters Patricia Diane Myers, Holly Elizabeth Mathisen, and Linda Lee Brown. Her husband Gary Zane Hestir died November 5, 2006 in Little Rock.

Susan and Gary were married in 1961. She became a mother while Gary was finishing chiropractic school at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. After graduation, they moved back to Little Rock in 1964. In lieu of college and career, she chose to focus her attention on raising a family and volunteered as a reading teacher in several local elementary and middle schools. She later attended the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where she received a B.S. degree in Elementary Education, followed by a M.Ed. in Education. During her graduate study, she taught in the Little Rock Independent School District.

Susan and Gary loved nature and spent much time on Lake Maumelle and other lakes around Arkansas, as well as exploring the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. Susan was quite attuned to nature and held a deep appreciation for Earth. She made it a point to instill such values in her children and students.

When Gary fell ill in 2005, she personally cared for him at home while continuing to teach and study for her advanced certification exams. After his death, she decided it was time to see the world and traveled extensively in Europe, India, Puerto Rico, and Iceland, as well as in the U.S., particularly New York, California, and Colorado. She and her sister Linda and her husband Billy Brown also spent much time traveling together, and she and Linda enjoyed regularly connecting with their cousins in Texas. Family and community were core values.

Susan remained a lifelong champion of the principles and practices of K-12 public education. She believed that public schools should not only be a center of academic excellence but also a place of belonging where all students feel that they belong and have an opportunity to realize their full potential.

She retired from Gibbs International Studies Magnet Elementary in 2013. She was a lifelong reader, never without a book. When she was not reading a novel, practicing pilates, attending film festivals, or protesting social injustice and inequity, she donated her time as a member of the Hall Alumni Association to teaching reading to underserved students at Hall.

Susan was known for her consummate integrity and the respectful way she comported herself with other people, listening carefully and compassionately, always offering her undivided attention. The word ‘comport’ is apt because it literally means “bearing or carrying together.” Although she valued her privacy, her life journey was always a journey with friends, family, students, or fellow teachers.

Susan’s life manifested a clear pattern: giving to her family, giving to her friends, and giving to her students, while diligently focused on her own growth and development.

The following is a poem she favored by Mary Oliver titled “Wild Geese.”

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Visitation will be Saturday, March 23 from 4–6 p.m. at Ruebel Funeral Home, 6313 W. Markham St. Little Rock.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Hall High Alumni Association (hallhighalumni.org).

Services under the direction of RuebelFuneralHome.com.