Bess Durham

Elizabeth Ruth (Bess) Durham, an artist and teacher of art for 33 years at Athens Academy, died Thursday, October 5, at her home in Watkinsville after an extended illness. She was 61.

She graduated from Oconee County High School in 1980 and from the University of Georgia in 1984 with a degree in art education. She taught at Athens Academy from 1985 until her retirement for health reasons in 2018. She often taught two generations of students from the same family.

Bess was known for sparking creativity and a love of art in the hundreds of students she taught through the years. She made many instrumental contributions as Visual Arts Director for Athens Academy and was a visionary in the projects she designed for her students. One such assignment, funded by a grant involved her students making large silk butterflies that would be suspended in the air like delicate sculpture, relating to the children that were interned at Terezin during the Holocaust.  This project inspired her students, opening their hearts and minds, and visually connecting them to their tragic peers in history. The butterfly project was joined with other butterfly projects across the nation at the Holocaust Museum in Houston, TX, for a memorial exhibit. This project represented the essence that Bess brought to the students at Athens Academy.

Bess also led students on yearly trips to Washington DC, and Italy. She had a Pied Piper way of making learning fun for her students. She is honored in memory by the Bess Durham Excellence in Art Award at Athens Academy.

She and her husband Greg moved a historical home to it’s current site in lower Oconee county raising their three sons in this most pastoral place.  She also was an avid gardener, always searching out plants to cultivate in her garden.

Bess was born on May 4, 1962 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her father, Horace Wayne Jones, died when she was only six weeks old and her mother, Mary Ruth Hardigree Jones Moore, died earlier this year.

She married Robert Gregory (Greg) Durham on May 4, 1985. She is survived by her husband, her three sons Samuel Durham, Jones Durham, and Nathaniel Durham, her sister Laura Lee Samford (John), her brother Luke Moore (Julie), and numerous nieces and nephews.

Arrangements are scheduled for Tuesday, October 10, at 1:00 pm at Antioch Christian Church, Watkinsville, GA, with a visitation following the service in the Fellowship Hall at the church.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Antioch Cemetery Fund.

Arrangements by Lord and Stephens, WEST, Watkinsville.