Longtime Teacher Lyla Northrup of Tustin Dies at 95

Lyla A. Northrup, a Tustin resident for 32 years who began her long teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse, has died. She was 95.

Northrup was recovering from a fractured hip at a nursing home at the time of her death on Sept. 7.

She was married for 67 years to Orville I. Northrup, superintendent of Tustin schools from 1940 to 1962. He died in 1991.

Lyla Northrup was born near Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1900 and grew up on the prairies of northeastern Colorado. Her first teaching job was in a one-room schoolhouse in Colorado heated only by a wooden stove.

After raising her sons, Northrup resumed teaching in Orange County in 1946. She graduated from Chapman College in 1956, fulfilling what family members said was a lifelong ambition.

She and her husband retired from education in 1962.

The couple survived a plane crash near Fullerton Municipal Airport in 1987. A single-engine Cessna piloted by their son, Jack, crash-landed a few hundred feet short of the airport runway. All three escaped serious injury.

She is survived by two sons, Jack Northrup of Balboa Island and Richard Northrup of San Diego; five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. on Sept. 21 at the Todd Memorial Chapel, 325 Indian Hills Boulevard in Claremont. A reception will be held at the Claremont Manor Care Center after the service.