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Died January 10, 2021.
Ossun Elementary School, Lafayette, LA
Special Education
Twenty-four years ago, Anna Botley was a certified nursing assistant for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital when she started working with Lafayette’s youngest learners at a local Head Start program.
“She fell in love with working with children,” said Botley’s daughter, Kianna Patton. “She found her purpose in teaching and working with children.”
Patton was 3 when her mom began to realize that love, and it would later inspire her to enter the world of education, too. Patton teaches at an elementary school in Lake Charles and feels like that was inevitable.
“I was always around kids and working with kids because of her,” Patton said. “Even in the children’s church ministry at our church Destiny of Faith, we would volunteer together taking care of kids since I was 12.
“I tried to run away from teaching, but just like her, my heart was drawn to teaching kids.”
Botley, originally from Ville Platte, died Sunday after 23 days fighting COVID-19. She had turned 61 four days earlier.
She is the second Lafayette Parish teacher to die due to COVID-19. Michelle Suire, a 53-year-old special education teacher at a Lafayette elementary, died Dec. 22 from complications of the virus.
Botley leaves behind husband Henry Botley, daughter Kianna Patton, son Rick Botley and a legacy of more than two decades with the Lafayette Parish School System. During that time, she’d worked as a teacher’s assistant, cafeteria worker, substitute teacher and special needs bus attendant.
Over the years, Botley worked with children of all ages. She was working with students in the special education department at Ossun Elementary before she died, Patton said.
“She loved her students,” Patton said. “For every holiday, she’d shower them with gifts. She loved to make learning fun for them, too. She always encouraged them.”
The two would swap stories about their students every day after school, she said.
“My favorite thing about her was how caring and loving she was with everyone she met and worked with,” Patton said. “She always had a smile on her face.”
Botley also was a fashionable dresser, a woman of faith and a great cook — “Her gumbo was her specialty,” Patton said.
“She loved to cook for everyone,” her daughter said. “Anything you wanted, she could cook. She just had a giving spirit, always wanting to bless others.”
Those who knew her had similar things to say on social media Monday.
Brandi J. Bell, who said she’d known Botley since Bell was a little kid, described the woman as “so sweet, always had a smile on her face.”
Lindsay Doucet Thibodeaux, who said she’d worked with Botley in recent years, called her one of the most genuine and nice people you could meet — “So sweet and caring!”
Botley’s niece, Jennifer Tezeno, said she wasn’t just an aunt, but a mentor, too
“She was always encouraging me and giving me advice,” Tezeno wrote on Facebook. “We will miss you teasing us… miss your laugh and smile… but God had other plans for you.”