Laurie Anne Talley Covington of Richmond, VA passed away on Monday, April 6 after an active life in education.

Mrs. Covington was a native of Richmond and graduated in 1968 from Huguenot High School, where she was an active member of the Future Teachers of America. She continued on to Westhampton College and graduated in 1972 with a major in Latin and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In the same year, she married Richard “Dick” Covington, a US Naval Academy graduate and Submariner. Her time as a Navy wife took her to Connecticut briefly before settling her in Charleston, SC, where she took her first job teaching Latin at the First Baptist School. In 1987, she moved to Northern Virginia and obtained a position teaching Latin at Flint Hill School in Oakton, VA. She would go on to serve as the Department Chair for the program for nearly two decades and coached numerous State and National Championship certamen teams, turning Flint Hill into one of the preeminent Latin programs in the nation throughout the 1990s and 2000s. She served on the boards of the Medusa Mythology Exam, the Virginia Junior Classical League, and the Classical Association of Virginia, which awarded her the Angela Lloyd Book Award for excellence in Latin education in 2005. In 2008, she was recognized by Flint Hill School with the Driving Spirit Award for her energetic and inspirational work in the school community.

After a brief retirement in 2009, Mrs. Covington returned to school at George Mason University to pursue a Master’s in School Counseling. She graduated with the Academic Program Award from the Counseling Department in 2012 and began work as a School Counselor at CD Hylton High School in Woodbridge, Virginia until her final retirement in 2021.

Over the years, Mrs. Covington was known as a “second mother” to so many of her students, and she inspired countless students to pursue their love of Classics into college, with many of them becoming Latin teachers themselves. A born educator, her warmth, compassion, wit, and willingness to do anything for her students made her a cornerstone experience for an entire generation of students at Flint Hill.

She was preceded in death by her husband of 32 years, Cdr Richard Benjamin Covington, and her parents Charles R. Talley Sr. and Anne Marie Talley. She is survived by her son, Richard Talley Covington (Kelsey) of Chesapeake and her brother, Charles R. Talley Jr. (Therese) of Midlothian. She also is survived by her two grandsons, Tripp Talley Covington and Cooper Mackenzie Covington.

The family welcomes all to join them for a memorial service to be held at Westhampton Memorial and Cremation Park in Richmond, VA on Monday, April 20 at 2:00 PM. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the American Classical League. Arrangements have been entrusted to Altmeyer Funeral Home – Southside chapel.

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An announcement and touching tribute from Nadia Ghosheh:

Dear Beloved CAV Sponsors,

It’s with the heaviest of hearts, we announce the passing of Laurie Covington – a wonderful Latin teacher whose influence and impact reverberated throughout over 40 years of teaching and counseling – most extensively as a Latin teacher at Flint Hill School for 19 years (1990-2009), and later as a counselor at C.D. Hylton HS after receiving her Masters in Counseling, eventually retiring in 2021. She also served as the VJCL Officer Liaison Co-Chair from 2009-2016, for which we remember her calm, caring, sensible leadership.

I had the distinct honor of being her student from 2005-2009 at Flint Hill School, where she bestowed upon all her students this gift: a gift of love, confidence, care, sass, and a passion for Latin. But Laurie was always a teacher first, and a Latin teacher second.

To this day, I still do not know how after being at the end of her Latin teaching career, she could still literally jump for joy at reading Catullus’ poems or the Aeneid like it was the first time she discovered them. She exuded this belief that every chiasmus, every moment of sibilance, every simile, every ablative absolute was just “so cool.”

There will be a service April 20 at 2:00 PM at Westhampton Memorial and Cremation Park in Richmond. If you would like to share your memories and pictures of Laurie,share this memorial tribute that we have created specifically for VJCL to create a memorial tribute for her family.

atque in perpetuum, ave atque vale.

Nadia Ghosheh & the VJCL Co-Chairs