Any good actor understands the importance of a script, and Florence Leffler — a Memphis educator and City Council member who embarked on a successful career as a professional actress at an age when most people decide to retire — prepared one years ago for her death.
Writing her own future obituary as if it were a play, Mrs. Leffler — a lifelong devotee of the theater — divided her life into "Acts."
Act One, she wrote, was represented by her career as an educator, which included a stint as the first female high school principal in Memphis public schools.
Retiring from the school system, she began what she labeled Act Two: Her acting career.
For Act Three, she became "a fulltime housewife," she wrote.
Finally, Act Four was her career in politics.
One thing is certain: Each act had a forceful and purposeful woman as its central character.
Mrs. Leffler, 94, died Monday at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis after a long illness, according to her son, Memphis lawyer Steve Leffler.
A resident of the Trezevant Manor retirement community in recent years, Mrs. Leffler had not been in the news for some time. But during the 1970s, '80s and '90s she was frequently in the newspaper. She might be on the front page, as an outspoken City Council member; and on the arts page, where her latest performance was being reviewed.
Born Florence Horton in Birmingham, Alabama, Mrs. Leffler was raised during the Depression in Amarillo, Texas. Her family moved to Memphis when she was 16.
Interested in the theater, she attended Northwestern University near Chicago, where her nickname became "Tex" and her classmates included such future stars as Paul Lynde, Cloris Leachman and Charlotte Rae ("The Facts of Life").
"At that time, Paul Lynde would've knifed his grandmother for a part," Mrs. Leffler said in a 1981 interivew. "And I felt very uncomfortable with them (her acting classmates). They were blasé and sarcastic, and I guess way more sophisticated than I. And I just decided that I didn't want to live my life among people like that."
Returning to Memphis with a Northwestern degree, she — initially reluctantly — followed in her mother's footsteps and earned a teacher's certificate. She taught speech and English at Whitehaven High School and Frayser High School, and then became one of the system's first guidance counselors.
When Mrs. Leffler first started teaching, "It was unthinkable that a woman could be a principal in a high school," she told The Commercial Appeal. But after various assistant principal jobs, she finished her 32-year school career as principal at Central — a placement that earned her the distinction of being the first female high school principal in the system then known as Memphis City Schools.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Leffler preferred being a teacher to an administrator. In 1992, she told The Commercial Appeal that she enjoyed teaching so much "I was almost embarrassed to take money for it."
After retiring from education in 1981, Mrs. Leffler returned to her first love, acting. With the support of the husband she had married in 1950, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge William B. Leffler (who died in 1987), she moved to New York in hopes of becoming a professional actress. She studied with José Ferrer and Otto Preminger; appeared in off-Broadway plays; and had a guest role on the Ralph Waite TV series "The Mississippi." However, he most financially lucrative role was a national television advertisement for denture adhesive. "That was the only part she received residuals for," Steve Leffler said.
Returning home, Mrs. Leffler was increasingly active in productions at Theatre Memphis, taking lead roles in "Driving Miss Daisy," "Picnic," "On Golden Pond," "The Lion in Winter" and "Steel Magnolias," to name a few. In other words, on the Memphis stage, Mrs. Leffler functioned as the city's Jessica Tandy, Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn and Dolly Parton.
After a while, she quit acting to widely with her husband. The couple visited China, Australia and New Zealand, among other locations, before Judge Leffler's death in 1987.
That year, Mrs. Leffler entered politics, winning an at-large position on the City Council. "I will never forget the surprise, joy, pride and sheer glee in the room that night," Mrs. Leffler's daughter, Elise Frick, told The Commercial Appeal, remebering that first election night.
A strong proponent of tourism and arts-based economic engines, such as the Pyramid arena and the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission, Mrs. Leffler served two terms on the council. She then stepped down because she also was a strong advocate of term limits.
As a politician, Mrs. Leffler was sometimes characterized as a conservative because she was an outspoken critic of what she called "the degeneration of morals and ethics."
"I think we're going to have to find our way back to a recognition of the fact that there is a right and wrong and that people are responsible for what they say and do," she said. At the same time, she supported initiatives intended to decrease the wealth gap. "The whole community has to prosper," she said. "Half of it can't prosper, or it just won't work.''
Mrs. Leffler was active in many organizations. She was long-time member of Second Presbyterian Church where she served over the years as a Sunday School teacher and a deacon. She served son the advisory board of the Salvation Army, the state Board of Education, the Land Use Control Board, and the boards of the Liberty Bowl, the Mid-South Fair, the Memphis Orchestral Society and Opera Memphis. She also was the first woman to be elected as president of the Memphis Kiwanis Club.
In a 1981 interview, Mrs. Leffler said she always had been "driven" to do "the best I can at whatever it is."
"I was raised on sayings," she said. "My grandmother had all these sayings, you know, like... 'Show me the company you keep and I'll tell you what you are,' 'Anything that is worth doing, is worth doing well.' I was raised on all of these. They're in the marrow of my bones. The fact of the matter is that it's just still in me to do the best I can at whatever it is."
Mrs. Leffler will be buried in Elmwood Cemetery. Canale Funeral Directors has charge. A memorial service will be organized at a later date, Steve Leffler said.
The family suggests contributions may be made to the William B. Leffler Scholarship Fund at the University of Memphis Law School, or to the Salvation Army, Theatre Memphis or the Memphis Symphony.
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Florence Leffler, 94, pioneering Memphis educator, Council member, actress, has died - Commercial Appeal
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