Roberta Smith Hampton
Roberta Smith Hampton, a California music teacher who later spent 18 years living in the West African nation of Ghana to help establish adult literacy, died March 29 in Simi Valley. She was 91.
Born in Danville, she earned a degree in 1936 from San Jose Teachers College, now San Jose State University.
She began teaching in Chowchilla, where she married Henry Hampton. Widowed at the age of 45, she continued to raise her four children as a single mother.
She ended her school teaching career at age 62 in Pleasanton and went to Ghana to work with Wycliffe Bible Translators. There, she lived in rural villages and worked with illiterate people, writing primers and storybooks for them.
Literacy programs that she established are still in place and are being carried on by native people of Ghana, her family said.
After suffering strokes, she had lived for the past three years in Simi Valley near her son Leon Hampton. She is also survived by sons Robert and James Hampton and daughter MaryLee Money, and a younger sister and several grandchildren and great grandchildren. A memorial service will be held April 21 in Simi Valley.
