Pauline Cottingham, active church member
Pauline Cottingham passed on from this life to her next Monday, Feb. 12, 2024.
She was born in Greenbackville, Va., April 17, 1926, to Emma and Seymore Lang, where she grew up with her siblings, Hilton, W. Carlton, Mary and Rachel, on their family farm. She attended Greenbackville and Franklin Elementary Schools in Virginia, eventually graduating from Snow Hill High School in Maryland. Pauline went to Goldey-Beacom College in Wilmington, where she received her associate of arts degree. After College, she returned to Snow Hill, Md., and started working as a teller and eventually head teller at Maryland National Bank. While working there, she met and befriended Wilson Cottingham, who would introduce his son, a returning veteran from WWII, and the eventual love of her life, William “Fowler” Cottingham, to Pauline. After dating, they married and bought a home in Snow Hill. Shortly after, she gave birth to two screaming rugrats, Gary and Carl Cottingham, five years apart, starting in 1953. In 1962, the family moved to Rehoboth Beach, where she lived the rest of her life. After the loss of Fowler, she devoted her life to taking care of her older siblings and to the family church, Westminster Presbyterian. She served as a session member, an elder, a deacon, in the Women’s Circle, and part of the Presbytery. For more than 30 years, she planned church luncheons and scheduled, and arranged all the flowers for the church. She was also involved in the Sussex Gardeners Club, where she could indulge her lifelong love of flowers and plants. There was never a more caring and supportive wife, mother, or grandmother than Pauline.
She is preceded in death by her husband, William "Fowler" Cottingham; and her siblings, Hilton Lang, W. Carlton Lang, Mary Timmons and Rachel Chapman. She is survived by her sons, Gary F. Cottingham and his wife Kathy, and Carl L. Cottingham and his wife Joanne; her grandchildren, Gary Cottingham Jr. and his wife Angie, John Cottingham, and Jillian Cottingham; great-grandchildren, Chase and Blake Cottingham; and unofficially adopted grandchildren, William and Kara Collins.
Services for Pauline will be held at 11 a.m., Friday, Feb. 23, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 301 King Charles Ave., Rehoboth Beach, where visitation for friends and family will begin at 10 a.m.
Visit Pauline’s Life memorial at parsellfuneralhomes.com.
