Ada Theressa Whittaker joined a world at war with itself in the summer of 1943 in Nashville, Tennessee, the firstborn of Charles (Sr) and Margaret Whittaker. As precocious as she was soon seen to be, it was still several years before she was called upon to join the primary fight of her life.

Medgar Evers brought her into the NAACP and helped her focus her inner troublemaker. She would go on to teach the same to Jon Lewis and many, many others.

While forging a successful career with IBM, she married Thomas Edward Bynum in Peekskill, New York and started a family.  Together, they had two sons: Phoenix (born Jason Scott Bynum) and Gregg Whitney Bynum (aka Coyote), and eventually moved to Terre Haute, Indiana.

Outside of career and family, her causes were many: assisting at-risk-youth and the homeless to achieve better outcomes; giving her time to the YWCA, Indiana's state board of education, the church, and as always the NAACP.

She was a skilled organizer and a brilliant fundraiser, blessed with the drive and inspiration to bring an impressive vibrancy to any group she joined.  Theoretically, she spent the final third of her life retired, but anyone who knew her knows that only gave her more time to do what was important to her: doing the hard work to help make this world a better place.

If you knew her and she dedicated time and effort to assisting you, she saw some potential in you worth nurturing. She did not shy away from fights. She did not believe in lost causes. She believed in always working to find a way through to success.

Though Theressa's end came suddenly, she passed peacefully on the evening of February 27. Age 81, she is survived not only by an extensive family who continues to love her dearly, but also leaves a legacy of those she befriended, those she aided, and those she taught, leaving all of us changed for the better.

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