The family of a well-known and well-loved Wrightsville Beach resident who died unexpectedly last week has asked her friends to honor her memory by supporting the event through which many of her friends said they will remember her.
Paula Sturdy, 60, was an avid supporter and advocate, as well as repeat winner, of the North Carolina Holiday Flotilla boat parade held annually in Wrightsville Beach. Many of her friends said it was fitting the family asked that donations be made to the flotilla in her memory, as the boating lifestyle, and the oversized personality she injected into it, was how many said they will remember her.
“She was bigger than life,” friend Robin Jones said. “Her heart was as big as it was tender. She wanted her friends happy and she loved them all dearly. Paula was funny, gorgeous and rare, a unique individual who impacted every life she touched.”
It was an observation echoed by several of her friends, as well as her ability to quickly strike up friendships with strangers.
“She was a friend to everyone she met,” said Jim Freeman, a past chairman of the flotilla, and friend of Sturdy since they first met in the late 1970s in Myrtle Beach.
Sturdy, along with husband Van Marr, won the flotilla four consecutive years on their boat, Reel Hot. Each year, she and Marr hosted a party on the back deck of their condo at the Moorings, where visitors helped decorate the boat that would later pass by those very docks as part of the flotilla parade.
For Sturdy, boating wasn’t just about the parade, as she was praised as an excellent yachtswoman who learned the art of sailing on her family’s 85-foot Hatteras yacht, eventually winning several sailing cups.
“She could repair a boat engine with the best of any man,” Jones said. “She could park that boat like threading a needle.”
While Sturdy made an impression on the town’s boating community through the flotilla, her love of Masonboro Island also created a venue for her to make new friends. She was a regular at the uninhabited island, enjoying time on the raft with friends and often sleeping overnight in the boat anchored just offshore.
“She was always at the center of the raft up,” Freeman said. “You could count on them to be out there every Saturday and Sunday.”
Sturdy earned her business administration degree from East Carolina University and remained a loyal Pirates fan and close to her sisters in the Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority. She recently had retired from the Sturdy Corporation, a local company founded by her father, where she worked for 36 years, most recently as a purchasing director.
Friends and relatives of Sturdy attended her viewing on Sunday and funeral on Monday. Freeman said that hundreds attended the events, as she was “so well known and respected throughout the community.”
Police said Sturdy died last Tuesday, Jan. 10, when she hit her head after a fall. The investigation is open, but police said it does not appear suspicious.
As friends said they are struggling to cope with Sturdy’s unexpected death, they said it will be important to honor her memory through donations to the North Carolina Holiday Flotilla, which can be made at P.O. Box 713, Wrightsville Beach, N.C. 28480.
“They were such an integral part of the flotilla family for many years,” said flotilla organizer Linda Brown. “It’s a terrible loss to our whole community, she’s been supportive of so many things.”
Email [email protected]
