By Chris Mayhew
Enquirer staff writer

FLORENCE - In the early 1950s, Freda L. Ryle Pitts was one of the people who started the first meetings for Hebron Baptist Church in a storefront window.

Mrs. Pitts, a homemaker and Sunday-school teacher at the church for more than 20 years, died Wednesday at home. She was 82.

A lifelong resident of Boone County, Mrs. Pitts lived in Petersburg and on a farm overlooking Gunpowder Road, her daughter said.

She was a charter member of Hebron Baptist Church, being one of the people who left Sand Run Baptist Church in nearby Francisville to start another mission, said her daughter, Bonnie S. Doerman of Hebron.

She stayed with the church as it moved to a Masonic Hall in Hebron until a permanent church was finished on Petersburg Road, her daughter said. In 2003, after 36 years in the same location, airport expansion forced the church to close. The congregation's meetings have moved into an old post office building at the airport, until construction on a new church is completed near the intersection of Cougar Path Road and Ky. 237.

Mrs. Pitts first taught Sunday school to teen girls at Sand Run Baptist. At Hebron Baptist she taught the older women's Sunday-school class, her daughter said.

A homemaker, Mrs. Pitts kept the family "close-knit," her daughter said.

"She was always home for me when I would come home from school," her daughter said. "She was the best mother that could ever be. She was always there anytime I was in need or anytime I wanted to talk to her."

Mrs. Pitts made sure the family adhered to Christian values, her daughter said.

"We didn't have a whole lot when we grew up, but we had love," she said.

Mrs. Pitts' husband, Elmer Pitts Jr., died in an automobile accident in 1969. They were married 28 years.

Two of Mrs. Pitts' sisters, Dora Mae Borders and Katherine Reffitt, preceded her in death.

Other survivors include her sister, Norma Humphrey of Lexington; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Services were held Saturday. Burial was in Belleview Cemetery. Middendorf-Bullock Funeral Home in Hebron handled arrangements.

Memorials: Hebron Baptist Church, 3435 Limaburg Road, Box 92, Hebron, KY 41048

E-mail cmayhew@enquirer.com