Lisa Bradfield

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Lisa C. Bradfield
December 7, 1955 – September 6, 2012

Lisa C. Bradfield, 56, of Waco, died Wednesday Sept. 5 at Providence Health Center of complications from pancreatic cancer, which she faced with grace, dignity and unimaginable courage for 18 months. Lisa’s life will be celebrated in a service at 1 p.m. Monday at First Presbyterian Church at 1100 Austin Ave. in Waco. Burial will follow at Oakwood Cemetery. Visitation will be from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at OakCrest Funeral Home at 4520 Bosque Blvd. in Waco.

Lisa was born on Dec. 7, 1955 in Chapel Hill, N.C. to R. T. and Melite Bain Campbell, and was reared and educated in Mobile, Ala.

She was a child of the sun, sand and surf who spent many long summer days with family and friends on the Alabama coast where her grandfather build a beach house on a dune overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, a refuge to which she, her husband and her son returned every summer.

Lisa was collector of seashells and driftwood, a lover of good music, an artist on canvas and a magician in the kitchen who grew her own herbs in a backyard garden ringed with bay trees and fragrant rosemary bushes filled with flocks of noisy sparrows.

She graduated in 1977 from Baylor University with a Bachelor of Science degree in education, majoring in speech therapy, worked as a speech therapist and special education teacher for the Bosque County Special Education Cooperative, and then returned to Baylor to complete a Master’s Degree in speech pathology and audiology in 1980.

She was a licensed speech pathologist throughout most of her 30-year career at the Heart of Texas Region MHMR Center, where she worked with young children, first as an educational specialist with the Diagnostic and Evaluation Team and later as coordinator of the D&E Unit and Interdisciplinary Team.

She went on to spend two decades working in center administration, but in January 2011 she turned her focus again to young children as she joined the staff of the agency’s Klaras Children’s Center, where she worked until shortly before her death.

She was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Waco where she served as an elder and taught confirmation class and Sunday school. She also volunteered in the church nursery.

She served on several Waco ISD advisory boards on both the campus and district levels.

Her mother Melite died in 2009.

Lisa married Rick Bradfield on Dec. 29, 1979 in Mobile, Ala. Their son Rob was born in 1990. She is also survived by her father, R.T. Campbell and stepmother Ann Campbell of Big Canoe, Ga.; sister Karen Williams and husband Tom of Alpharetta, Ga.; sister-in-law Nancy Valentine and husband Jess of Erie, Colo.; father-in-law Robert Bradfield of Boulder, Colo., and three sisters in spirit with whom she shared secrets and read the runes, Pamela Marcum, Carol Salvesen and Elizabeth Burnett.

Lisa was deeply devoted to the children whose lives she touched, so in lieu of flowers her family asks those who knew and loved her to honor her memory by spending some special time with the children in their lives.

Memorial donations may be made to the Klaras Children’s Center, PO Box 890, Waco, TX 76703 or to First Presbyterian Church, 1100 Austin Ave, Waco, TX 76701 (designate youth activities fund).