Graveside services for Mrs. Sondra Ann Johnston Teutsch, age 83, of Benton, LA, will be held at 11:00 am, Saturday, February 8, 2025, at the Union Springs Cemetery, Shongaloo, LA, with Bro. Billy Crosby officiating. Interment will follow under the direction of Bailey Funeral Home, Springhill, LA.
Sondra Ann Teutsch, nicknamed “Gem” by her paternal grandfather Chesley Johnston, whom she adored and with whom she spent much time, was a maven of cheerful hospitality and generosity. She stepped from her earthly life into worshipping the Lord in the radiance of His glory on Monday, February 3, 2025. The eldest daughter of four children born to H.H. “Boots” and Delphene Johnston, Sondra was born on January 14, 1942, around the time of World War II to those of the “greatest generation,” who had come through The Great Depression and then triumphed over oppressive global forces arising on the heels of a massive socio-economic collapse. From an early age, Sondra recognized the importance of generational victories and honored those who had come before her.
Born from lines of Texas ministry and Louisiana farming, Sondra carried a work ethic alongside an integrity that were instilled by people of faith who were highly skilled in working soil of tough red clay. Like many eldest among children, Sondra rose to become a leader within her family, helping her parents with tasks around the family farm, and with the cares and concerns of senior relatives along with those of her younger siblings. From her youth, she was esteemed as one worthy of respect and trust by those she encountered.
While still a teenager, she met and married the great love of her life, Gene Teutsch, a young man from a family of three boys on a nearby farm. In 1967 they built a black brick house in Houston, Texas that mirrored the one that her parents had built back home just off LA Highway 2, and a life with Sondra working in executive office administration for a large steel company and Gene as a Houston firefighter. Together they watched surrounding fields of soybean and cotton burgeon into office buildings and subdivisions, as Houston began to emerge as the oil and gas epicenter of the nation.
While Sondra and Gene had no children of their own, they took great joy in often playing host to their siblings’ children, including nieces Karen and Laine and nephews Shane and Shannon. These children were the recipients of their lavish hospitality and generosity, which notably extended to Sondra’s legendary skills in the kitchen and Gene’s equally famous sense of humor. Sondra’s chicken fried steak and homemade rolls, along with Gene’s penchant for surprise guests such as tiny live turtles secretly tucked into Sondra’s terrarium, are well-remembered still.
During the early to mid-1970s, Sondra and Gene were highly active members of Northwest Memorial Baptist Church (now Houston NW Church) in Houston, TX, which was eventually pastored by Billy Crosby, now Pastor Emeritus of Summer Grove Baptist Church in Shreveport. Together, Sondra and Gene made multiple trips to the Holy Land with their church, fellowshipping and ministering to individuals and other couples in the Houston area, and far beyond.
When Gene’s life was tragically cut short just into the second decade of their marriage, Sondra’s family members and friends rallied around her in a time of tremendous shock and grief. Sondra began the work of mending her broken heart by determinedly honoring Gene’s memory through continuance of boundless hospitality and generosity to everyone she knew or met. As a balm to her soul during this time, Sondra lived Nehemiah 8:10: “Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Ultimately, Sondra would remarry and embark upon the next era of her life, set in a small town in Nebraska, over a thousand miles away and in many aspects likewise distant from her former life in Houston, a life that nonetheless in a sense resembled her beginnings as a small-town farmer’s daughter in Louisiana. With this husband she traveled the United States with him in his job, enjoying two of her favorite pastimes, seeing new places and meeting new people. Sondra never met a stranger nor a silence that she would falter in addressing (one of her nieces joked, waiting for Sondra in the car post-gathering, “Sondra may have missed a call as a politician”).
She is survived by her sister, Sue Kilpatrick and husband, Hershel of Benton, LA; numerous nieces and nephews and was preceded in death by her parents; husband, Gene Teutsch; and brothers, Ronnie Johnston and Randall Johnston.
It pleased the Father to place one of His priceless jewels in a field of humble Louisiana soil, glittering in the red clay and the pines, and it is to this place she now returns. Beloved by many across an expanse of land and time, Sondra’s priceless gems of personality and presence will be irreplaceably missed.
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Bailey Funeral Home
Springhill, LA
318-539-3555