Little Friends For Peace is heartbroken to share the loss of one of our most beloved peacemakers and oldest friends, Ann Little, who passed away July 11 after suffering a stroke in late June.

Throughout the years, she became a special friend of ours and a true ally of LFFP.

Ann used to teach at the local public school as a special education teacher. She then left on disability and was often confined to her bed, but she never let this limit her social impact nor her capacity to love.

Despite her bad heart and diabetes, the ever smiling and optimistic Ann invested her time and miraculous abundance of energy in care and love for the children of the neighborhood. From the confines of her bed, in what the community has come to know as her “Cozy Room,” Ann lovingly and compassionately raised four generations of Sursum Corda residents by providing snacks, encouragement, Christmas presents, company, homework help, a listening ear, and a sense of family.

On any given day, it wasn't uncommon to find a cluster of 10 kids—from 2-year-olds to high schoolers—gathered on her haven of a bed. If you'd ventured into her room, which became something of a community center, you would've noticed an entire wall wallpapered in photographs of the children she raised—and their children, and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children.

She became an arbiter of trite childhood fights, a tutor, a grandmother figure, and a source of love and peace in an often-violent environment.

Gandhi asserted that violence would end where love began, and it began in the Cozy Room on the big bed with Ann’s loving heart.

She reminded us often that true peace building is in investing in relationships and connecting heart to heart—having compassion for one another. She showed us how to spread peace by serving as a refuge for hopeless spirits, comforting them, and teaching them joy.