Considering she was a teacher, a Head Start worker, a mother to five, a grandmother to 13 and a great-grandmother to seven, it'd be hard to accuse Ardath Stanton Francke, who died Monday at 91, of not caring about children.
But, as she said in a 2009 interview, it was one time she let a child down that led her to help found Daymark, which has been serving disadvantaged youth for over 40 years.
It was around Christmas: children were bringing college friends home, a neighbor asked her to keep a puppy for a week so she could surprise her own children with it, a friend asked her to get a plant for her mother, and she'd already agreed to allow another friend's daughter to have her wedding rehearsal dinner at her house.
"The phone rang, and it was a Head Start teacher. She said, 'Ardath, can you take a 14-year-old girl into your house until after the holidays?'" Francke recalled in the interview. "I told her I couldn't do that. On Christmas Eve, we went to the midnight service at church. I walked into the entry, and there was a manger scene. And 'No room in the inn' just reverberated in my head.
"I sat through the service, but I didn't feel much Christmas spirit. Where was that child? I had turned her away. When I walked out into the cold, brisk starlit night and the Catholic bells were chiming across the street, my heart felt like a stone."
She said it was the guilt over that child that led her to help found Daymark in 1974. Vicki Pleasant, the Charleston-based nonprofit's executive director, said it's now an umbrella organization for Patchwork, an emergency crisis shelter for runaway and homeless youth; Turning Point, a semi-independent living program for those ages 15-21 who are in state custody for various reasons, such as their parents' physical or sexual abuse; and a transitional living program for those ages 16-21, with four beds for homeless teenagers and one for a youth in state custody.
Pleasant said Daymark also provides a program to help youths get GEDs, plus a substance abuse prevention group and a group focused on learning basic living skills, like how to cook and open bank accounts. In all, Daymark has served over 40,000 youth since its founding, Pleasant said.
"Guilt can be productive," Francke had said in her 2009 interview.
Pleasant said Francke was a board member for many years, helped recruit other board members and raised an "enormous amount" of money.
"There wasn't anything that she didn't do for many, many years," Pleasant said.
Francke was born on April 6, 1924, the oldest of three children, in Greenbrier, Arkansas. The family eventually settled in Greenwood, Mississippi, when she was in elementary school. She graduated from the Mississippi State College for Women in 1946 and started teaching in Jonestown, Mississippi.
She married a doctor, Paul Francke, after seeing him for six months. They wed in 1949 and she went to work in a private school to support them both during his low-paid residency in Chicago, Illinois.
She said she owed her husband "so much," saying he taught her to play tennis, ski and ice skate, and they rode horses in the mountains every Wednesday. He died in 2010.
"That was the love of her life," said Kate McWhorter, a grandchild who had taken care of Franke since September, while she was in hospice. "And that's what brought her the most peace at the end of life was the thought of seeing him again, and she was confident she was going to.
"She said she felt she was going home."
The family moved to Charleston in 1952, when she also became a member of the local First Presbyterian Church, which eventually helped start Daymark. After her children left home, she became the parent-involvement worker for Head Start, an early childhood education program for children from low-income families. After her experience of Christmas guilt, she helped assemble a task force of several organizations to found Daymark.
In 2006, the nondenominational West Virginia Institute For Spirituality opened a "hermitage" building named after Francke in the backyard of its Virginia Street location. The building, meant to provide visitors seclusion for temporary periods of study and prayer, has a gathering space and a small apartment. Francke was a longtime supporter of both the institute and its predecessor, the Roman Catholic Cenacle Sisters.
Sister Molly Maloney said Francke completed training to become an associate spiritual director for the group and donated funds to help create the hermitage.
In 2012, Franke received a Governor's Service Award for Lifetime Achievement.
"I have never met anyone that has met her that hasn't been amazed by her," McWhorter said.
Francke's funeral will be 1:30 p.m. Sunday at First Presbyterian Church in Charleston, with a family visitation after the service. Donations can be made to First Presbyterian, 16 Leon Sullivan Way, Charleston, WV 25301, or to Daymark, 1592 Washington St., East, Suite 2, Charleston, WV 25311.