Sharon Roberds Baxter

Sharon Roberds Baxter, PhD, 88, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, died on March 12, 2026, at Elk River Health Center in Winchester, Tennessee.

Born on September 8, 1937, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Wesley and Dorothy Roberds, Sharon grew up while her father taught at the University of Arkansas. She graduated from Westchester High School in California, attended Chapman College in Orange County for two years, and completed her undergraduate degree at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. There she met William (Bill) Baxter, marrying him on May 29, 1959—her graduation day.

The couple’s early years took them to Larned, Kansas, where their daughter Cynthia was born, then to Lawrence, Kansas, where sons Brett and Brice joined the family. In 1966 they moved to Bowling Green, Ohio, where Bill joined the faculty of Bowling Green State University. While raising their three children, Sharon earned a master’s degree in counseling from BGSU in 1975 and a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Toledo in 1986. From 1980 to 1996 she served as a home-school counselor at a county-wide Educational Resources Center, supporting students who struggled in traditional classrooms.

Deeply committed to service, Sharon helped establish a 24-hour crisis phone line through an ecumenical campus ministry at BGSU in the wake of the 1970 Kent State shootings, a program that later evolved into a county-wide helpline. She became a certified instructor in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, based on the work of Carl Jung, and led numerous workshops for schools and businesses. An avid traveler, she and Bill visited more than 40 countries and frequently led educational tours to Maya ruins and sites in Mexico and Central America. Together they performed the two-person play “Love Letters” by A.R. Gurney more than thirty times for audiences in Ohio and Tennessee. In her later years in Tullahoma, she served as president of the Coffee County Senior Center and volunteered with Meals on Wheels.

Sharon is survived by her husband of 67 years, William Baxter; her children, Cynthia of Gorham, Maine, Brett of St. Augustine, Florida, and Brice of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and their spouses; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.