Bill and Gay Culp, couple always interested, active

He was an adventurer. She was his anchor.

Bill Culp was a photographer, a massage therapist, a Harley rider, a gregarious man and a harmless flirt who took hang-gliding lessons and delighted in jumping off Lookout Mountain.

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Gay and Bill Culp were forever on an adventure. ‘They were each other’s yin and yang,’ says their daughter, Laura Tansill.

Gay Culp was a media specialist who routinely stayed at school late and worked through summer vacations. Her principal called her the heartbeat of Atlanta’s Margaret Fain Elementary School, a woman who went so far beyond her job description that she was “everything to everybody.”

“They were both so strong-willed, but they supported each other,” said the Culps’ daughter, Laura Tansill of Kennesaw. “They were each other’s yin and yang.”

William M. Culp, 66, and Gay H. Culp, 65, of southwest Atlanta, died Feb. 27 when the car in which they were riding was crushed by an out-of-control truck about a mile from their home. Their bodies were cremated. A memorial service is today at 2 p.m. at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta.

The Culps met in a singles group at Peachtree Presbyterian Church.

He was a graduate of Northside High School and Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., a Vietnam veteran who was working for the Southwest YMCA. She was a graduate of Gainesville High School and Agnes Scott College and a teacher in DeKalb County schools.

They married in 1971, and their adventure began. She followed his escapades everywhere, said their friend Dyana Haik of Louisiana, but she was always armed with a good book.

Mr. Culp worked for a time for a local printing company and then ran his own photo developing business, Culp Photographic, in downtown Atlanta. His son, John Culp of Atlanta, said he was a perfectionist, but also a “terribly exciting guy who was interested in all this crazy stuff.”

He rattled off an abbreviated list of his father’s hobbies: vegetable gardening, orchid growing, magic, kites, weaving (he bought a loom and taught himself), woodworking (he built his daughter’s bed), sailing, motorcycle riding, canoeing, video editing, ham radio, welding, fishing, poker, playing the piano, taking RV trips, and playing the handbells at Central Presbyterian Church. He also raised rabbits for a while.

“He didn’t like to sit still,” his daughter said.

His wife enjoyed being “dragged along” on her husband’s pursuits and loved her job, family and friends said. They say she worked through summers so she’d have more time for the kids when they returned to what her principal called a “true urban neighborhood school.”

“We have to be mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers, counselors,” Marcus Stallworth said. “We have to be everything for the children we serve, and she was everything to everybody she came into contact with.”

Mrs. Culp did scheduling for the school; helped with summer enrollment; conducted the school’s morning television production, “Good Morning, Fain”; and tried to stimulate students’ interest in reading by putting on events such as American Girl doll tea parties. With her husband, she ran a school handbell choir and helped build up the school’s playground.

“Our two blessings, if you can have any blessings that come out of this,” said their daughter, “are that they died together and that they died instantly.”

There were no additional survivors.