A Tribute to Elizabeth Reed Berry, Teacher and Friend
THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of Union
County, Georgia
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
A
Tribute to Elizabeth Reed Berry, Teacher and Friend
Delightful
task! To rear the tender thought,
To teach the
young idea how to shoot.”
-James
Thomson (1700-1748 – from “The Seasons—Spring”
The
Union County High School
Class of 1947
Senior
Trip to Washington,
DC, May 25-30, 1947
Seated:
L. to
R.: Mr. J. H. Cooley, Principal; Just graduated seniors: Max
Rogers,
Glenn Franklin, Max Stephens, Bill Abernathy, Price Turner, Charles
Souther,
Charles Jenkins, Jewel Payne, Robert Dyer, Dennis Wilson, and Mr. N. V.
Camp,
Science Teacher.
Standing, L. to
R.: Just
graduated seniors Mary Lou Hunter, Lois Melton, Joyce Crump, Loujine
Young,
Helen Brooks, Ethelene Dyer; Homeroom and English Teacher Mrs.
Elizabeth
Berry; County School Worker Mrs. Doris Caldwell, Visiting Teacher
(Truant
Officer), and Mrs. Star Bedenbaugh, Home Economics Teacher; and Just
Graduated
Seniors Madge Nicholson, Maggie Lee Sullivan, Charlene Wimpey and Verna
Ree
Cook.
It was the fall of 1946 when
Mrs. Elizabeth
Reed Berry
came as a new teacher to Union
County High School.
I
was a senior and she was assigned to be homeroom advisor for my Class
of
1947. She had graduated three years
before from Bessie
Tift College
at Forsyth, Georgia and had been born
and
reared in far-away (to us) Augusta,
Georgia,
the
daughter of Robert Henry Reed and Mary Chambers Reed.
She had been employed her first two
years of teaching in Murphy, North
Carolina at a school there.
When she married Union
County
native John Berry in 1946, she looked for a job in our county and was
employed
straight away by the Board of Education and our Principal, Mr. James H.
Cooley. Maybe she volunteered to be
senior class sponsor, or perhaps she was assigned that task. Whichever,
we were
soon in contact with a vivacious, pleasant, happy young teacher who was
just
enough older than her students to let us know she meant business in
classroom
discipline. But her kind ways and
aptness to teach soon endeared us to her.
Soon students and teacher had struck up a rapport that would
last years
beyond our graduation time of May 1947.
In this tribute I will pay respect to
Mrs. Berry
as
teacher, first and foremost, and as a dear friend of lifetime
proportions. I shall never forget her
influence upon my
life. My heart was saddened as I heard
of her death on Sunday,
May 30, 2010 at age 87. Her
last
years, beset with illness, were filled with much tender loving care
from her
son W. R. Berry and her daughter Annette Berry Crawford.
But until her illness of long duration, she
was exemplary in keeping in touch with “her students” of the Class of
1947,
inquiring how we were faring in our own work and living out our lives. She was still our teacher, as James Thomson
so aptly stated, “rearing our thoughts and encouraging our ideas to
shoot”
(albeit by our own advancing years these thoughts could no longer be
called
young and tender).
When Elizabeth Berry married my
long-time neighbor on the edge of Choestoe and Owltown, John Berry, I
was a
bereft young girl who had lost my mother one year prior to her coming
to our
community to live. We attended the same
church, Choestoe Baptist, and even before she became my senior year
teacher, we
had become Christian friends. She
encouraged me greatly, and we started a little “Sunday evening dinner
celebration.” This involved coming to my
house one Sunday for a meal (which I had to cook, even at the young
tender age
I was, because I became the chef and housekeeper at our farm home
following
Mother’s death). The other two in the
three-some Sunday evening meal-sharings were Mrs. Berry, as she and
John hosted
us, and my double-first-cousin Marie Collins whose mother (my aunt)
Northa Dyer
Collins, would prepare a wonderful meal with Marie’s help.
How I had the courage to lay a table and cook
for this group and our friends prior to Sunday Night “Training Union”
(as it
was called then), I’ll never know. But
Mrs. Berry
would always compliment me on my meals, my clean house, and my
willingness to
participate in the fellowship meal. From
that experience I learned much about how to entertain guests and gain
confidence in opening my home to visitors.
At school I remember much that Mrs.
Berry led us to do. She sponsored our
“senior play,” the drama we rehearsed to perform and for which we sold
tickets
to raise money. We had a junior-senior
prom, and Mrs. Berry
was instrumental in planning and implementing a wonderful event. We had a banquet to which we invited our
poet, Byron Herbert Reece. It was my
duty to introduce him. Mrs. Berry aptly
helped me
with the introductory speech. And then
when graduation came, I was thrilled to be named valedictorian of my
class. Mrs. Berry, desiring that I should give a
good
speech on graduation night, was my main constructive critic and coach
in
preparing the address.
We had the rare privilege of taking an
educational trip to our nation’s capitol following graduation. About half of my classmates, twenty of us,
went on the trip. It seems antiquated
now, but instead of a comfortable rented coach, we rode the whole trip
from
Blairsville to Washington D. C. on a school bus. Accompanying
us were Mr. J. H. Cooley, our
principal; Mr. N. V. Camp, our science teacher; and lady teachers Mrs. Elizabeth Berry and Miss
Star
Bedenbaugh, and county visiting teacher Mrs. Doris Collins Caldwell. It was a trip of a lifetime, and we country
students who had hardly been any farther afield than Blairsville,
Murphy, N. C.
or Gainesville, at the most, were led by our teachers on that trip to
learn how
to meet our legislators and senators and how to get the most from our
tours of the Capitol, the White House, the
Smithsonian, Arlington Cemetery, the Treasury Department, the Library
of
Congress and the stately monuments of our nation’s capitol, as well as
George
Washington’s home at Mt. Vernon. Up to
that point in my life, it was the trip of my life.
I have been forever grateful for Mrs. Berry and the others who
went the extra mile to “rear our tender thoughts and teach our young
ideas how
to shoot.”
Mrs. Berry
had a great influence upon my choosing
teaching as my own career. Several years
after she left Union
County High School, she got
certification in school library
media services, and she and I attended many professional meetings and
enjoyed
again the fellowship of being together with mutual interests. When my Class of 1947 began having Class
Reunions
in 1984 and rejuvenated our love for each other and our teachers, Mrs. Berry was a
regular and
welcome attendee.
As when we were her students in
1946-1947, she was always interested in what we were doing to make a
difference
in life. She encouraged us as we made an
historical quilt of the history of education in Union County,
as we erected a message board at the entrance to the school grounds,
and
especially as we set up and financed the Class of 1947 Scholarship Fund
that
assists a graduating senior from Union County High with college costs
each
year.
To the family of our teacher and
friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, our deepest condolences.
Know that she had a powerful impact and a
lasting influence upon our lives.
c2010 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published June
3, 2010
in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA. Reprinted by
permission. All rights reserved.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail [email protected];
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Updated June 15, 2010
Back To Union County, Georgia GenWeb Site