Obituary of Louise Falls Arnold

CHAPEL HILL Louise Halls Falls Arnold died on Saturday, the fourth day of May, 2013 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A native South Carolinian, a beloved first-grade teacher, a quietly gutsy traveler, and a whirlwind of a hostess, a loving wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and caretaker, she lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for the for past twelve years. She was 92 at the time of her death. Louise was born in 1920 in Fairforest, South Carolina, the second of the five children of Myrtle Hall Falls and Arthur Webb Falls and the oldest of four girls. She graduated from Converse College with a degree in music education and taught piano for two years until her marriage to James Ralph Arnold of Woodruff, South Carolina in 1944. They moved to Rome, Georgia where they both taught at Darlington Preparatory School for two years before spending a year abroad in post-war France and Switzerland. They returned to South Carolina where Louise began a long career of public school teaching, most years of that spent in a first-grade classroom at Schneider School and Brennan School of the Richland County Public School System. She literally taught thousands of children to read. Reading was a lifelong joy for her as well. After she retired from teaching, she and her husband Jim were fortunate to travel frequently and with great curiosity and enthusiasm. Louise was a member of University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, active in various committees and in a Women's Circle there until her health prevented those associations. Prior to moving to Chapel Hill, she had been an active member of Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. and her ashes will be interred in the Columbarium at Shandon Presbyterian aside those of her husband Jim. There will be a memorial service at University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Saturday, May 18, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. She is survived by her cherished daughter, Carolyn Arnold Karpinos, and her son-in-law, Ralph Douglas Karpinos whom she dearly loved and who was always proudly introduced as her son; her adored grandchildren, Justin Gelber Karpinos and his wife Ashley Rowatt Karpinos of Nashville, Tennessee and Jonathan Arnold Karpinos and his wife Leah Mae Gotcsik of Brooklyn, New York; and two recently born and doted-upon great-grandsons, Elliott James Karpinos and James Henry Gotcsik Karpinos, as well as her beloved younger sister Mary Falls Watson now of Piedmont, South Carolina and wonderful nieces and nephews in Piedmont, South Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; New York, New York and Clifton, Virginia. Louise's death was preceded by the death of her husband James Ralph Arnold in 2000 and the death of her grandson James Bernard Karpinos in 2008, as well as the deaths of her younger sisters Dorothy Falls Finch and Harriette Falls Senter. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorial contributions be made to the University Presbyterian Church Pastors' Fund, 209 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514 or to the James Karpinos Scholarship Fund, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 1 University Heights, Asheville, North Carolina 28804. =