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In Memory - Teachers

Obituaries in Wilmington, DE | The News Journal

Bert Lee Damron, Jr, age 92, of Wilmington, DE, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, November 23, 2021.

Bert was born in Washington DC on June 8, 1929. With a PhD in Music Education, he spent his career as a professional educator, conductor, arranger, and musician. While raising a family of six children in Silver Spring, Maryland, he was director of music programs in the Montgomery County Public Schools. He performed with numerous outstanding groups including the National Symphony Orchestra. He later was assistant dean of the School of Fine Arts at Ohio University. He primarily played woodwind instruments and loved jazz. Bert was always modest about his musical accomplishments. He was a very good, gentle loving man, a devout Catholic and a member of the Cathedral of St. Peters Parish.

Along with his parents, Bert was predeceased by his first wife, Gertrud (Trudy); his sons, Christopher Eric Damron and Bert Lee Damron III; his sister, Phyllis Murray; and brother, Bray “Bud” Damron.

Bert is survived by his wife, Margaret Consiglio; his sons, Mark Damron (Elva), Michael Damron (Alison), and Paul Damron; his daughter, Monica Turner (Tom); his daughters-in-law, Tina Damron and Cheryl Damron; his six grandchildren and his six great grandchildren; and his sister, Judi Nixon (Mike).

Family and friends are invited to visit on Thursday, December 2, 2021 at the Cathedral of St. Peter, 500 N. West St., Wilmington, DE 19801 beginning at 11am. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow at 12pm. Interment will be held in St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery, 460 N. Union St., Kennett Square, PA 19348.

To be mindful and considerate of everyone’s varying health conditions, the family respectfully requests that everyone in attendance please wear a face mask.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be made to the American Cancer Society.

 

 

 

JIM DAVIS

March 22, 2016

 

 


James M. Davis November 27, 1930 March 22, 2016 James M. Davis, 85, a resident of The Village at Penn State, died Tuesday, March 22, 2016. He was born in Altoona, PA on November 27, 1930, the son of the late John Rolland Davis and Marion Mentzer Davis. On August 15, 1953, in Altoona, he married JoAnne Marie Keller who survives at home. Jim was a 1948 graduate of Altoona High School. In 1952, he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Education, and in 1953 his Masters degree in Health Education, both from Penn State University. He served in the United States Army Medical Corps at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C., from 1953-1955. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, Craig M. Davis of Raleigh, North Carolina, and Lynn D. Hellmuth and her husband Frank, of Charlotte, North Carolina; three grandchildren, of whom he was tremendously proud: Whitney L. Davis, J. Reid Judson Davis, and Scott F. Hellmuth; and three great- grandchildren: Violet E. Davis, Keegan H. Davis, and Mila R. Davis. From 1955-1988, Jim taught Health & Physical Education. He also coached cross country and track and field. Jim enjoyed nine years at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and twenty four years at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. Jim loved every minute of his teaching and coaching career. He was inducted into the Montgomery College Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995. He was a member of the State College Presbyterian Church. A celebration of life will be held at The Village at Penn State, 260 Lions Hill Rd., State College from 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2016. Interment will be private at the convenience of the family at the Boalsburg Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to State College Presbyterian Church at 132 West Beaver Avenue, State Collage, PA 16801 or a . Arrangements are under the care of Koch Funeral Home, State College. Online condolences and signing of the guest book may be entered at www.kochfuneralhome.com or visit us on Facebook.

John Smeby

It is amazing how much Jim Davis impacted my life: As an underachiever at B-CCHS, I tried out for the cross country team one afternoon. Mr. Davis had me take an easy half mile lap around the school perimeter as a warmup. The regular guys (his favored boys) tore me up and I was in such poor shape that I could hardly make it. That was the last "lap" I ran for Mr. Davis as I left the practice (quit). Fast-forward 40 years: After I was wounded in Vietnam in 1967, jogging became my main form of excercise to mitigate the shrapnel injuries. I completed running a marathon (26.2 miles) in all 50 states and the D.C. Nov. 2004. For those of you that have done, or still do long distance running (alot of slow jogging in my case), when the pain would be so great I wanted to quit, I put the thought of Mr. Davis snickering/laughing at me as I left that practice at B-CCHS in my mind, and found the mental and physical strength to continue and finish (completed 64 marathons). Mr. Davis, THANK YOU SO VERY VERY MUCH!!! You were such an inspiration to me and I am sure you never realized it----.

BENJAMIN W. ALLNUTT

June 4, 1976

By Claudia Levy, Washington Post Staff Writer

Benjamin W. Allnutt, 56, a journalism and English teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School who was a nationally recognized authority on secondary school publications, died Wednesday at Sibley Hospital following surgery. He had suffered from Hodgkin’s disease for more than a year.

During nearly three decades as a B-CC teacher, Mr. Allnutt helped build the school's biweekly paper, The Tattler, into an award-winning publication. many of whose

staff later made careers in journalism. His own reputation grew along with the paper's and he was active for many years in scholastic press organizations and as a college lecturer.

On the 50th anniversary of the National Scholastic Press Association, he was cited as one of 13 teachers across the country who had contributed the most the scholastic journalism.

A native of Dawsonville, Md., and a longtime resident of Germantown, Mr. Allnutt was the editor of the Springboard to Journalism, a text book first published in 1960 by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. In 1959, he served as president of the Columbia University-affiliated organization, made up of several thousand high school and college publications advisers.

Although hospitalized for several months this year, Mr. Allnutt oversaw preparation of a 112-page, 50th anniversary issue of the Tattler, an undertaking he described as the first comprehensive history of the school and the Bethesda community ever written.

Typically, he originated many of the story ideas, but most of the production work was left to senior students who received training in their junior year. It was a learn-by-doing style of instruction that had worked well at the Tattler for Years.

As an advisor, "he gave people a taste of responsibility very early," said Kay Mills, a Newhouse National News Service writer and a former student at B-CC.

Parents might have worried about their teen-agers having to read page proofs alone at the downtown Greyhound bus station late at night--the Tattler used to be printed out of town--but Mr. Allnutt "knew we'd be all right," she said. "Funny enough, we always were."

 Tattler staffers were "drilled on the virtues of clarity, brevity, and never starting a story with the word "the"....and the lectures on accuracy never ceased," said former Tattler Editor Rita Braver, now co producer in Washington of the CBS Morning News.

The newspaper advisor was "surrogate father, friend, disciplinarian, and story teller extraordinaire," she said. "He made journalism so interesting that we never minded working so hard. We knew we had to make our deadlines with no stalling."

A large, congenial and robust man who had served as an Army Air Corps captain in Asia and India during World War II. Mr. Allnutt had little journalism experience when he joined the Montgomery County school system in 1946. A Poolesville High School graduate, he had studied History and English at Western Maryland college and later received a master's degree at George Washington University.

For a number of years, he had lectured on yearbook production during the summer session at Catholic University and had recently been an instructor there at the Journalism Institute for High School Students. He also was a visiting lecturer at the University of Minnesota and  conducted a series of publications workshops around the country between 1966 and 1974.

As the Tattler garnered state and national journalism prizes over the years, Mr. Allnutt received the national distinguished adviser awards of both the Newspaper Fund Inc. and the National Council of Publication Advisers.

He was also honored by the Secondary Educators of America as an outstanding teacher and was named Maryland journalism teacher-adviser by the Baltimore Sun Papers. Last year he was admitted to the Hall of Fame of the university of Oklahoma's School of Journalism.

Oklahoma Gov. David Boren, news editor of the Tattler in 1959 and one of Mr. Allnutt's favorite students, has said that he acquired a lasting interest in journalism during his high school years.

He is survived by his mother, Jane Williams Allnutt of the home, 18810 Germantown Rd,, Germantown.

Sandra Ann Gould

Birth: Oct. 6, 1935; Death: Jan. 14, 1998.

Saundra Ann (Gould) Berkley, 62, of Rapid River, Michigan, formerly of River Forest, died January 14 in her home following a lengthy illness with cancer. Mrs. Berkley was born October 6, 1935 in Reading, Massachusetts, the daughter of Rita Clougherty and George A. Gould. She received her bachelor of arts degree from the University of Hawaii and her master of arts degree from the Catholic University of America. She also attended school at the University of Maryland, Georgetown University and Breadloaf University in Vermont and studied under the John Hay Fellow Scholarship at Columbia University. Mrs. Berkley was a teacher. She taught for many years at numerous high schools and universities including Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, Bethesda, Md., Triton College, River Grove, Elmwood Park High School, River Grove, Oak Park-River Forest High School and Bay De Noc Community College, Escanaba, Mich. She married James Berkley on January 25, 1964 and they were residents of River Forest until her retirement in 1990 when they moved to Michigan. She was a member of the St. Charles Church in Rapid River, Gladstone Coterie, PEO, Stonington Herb Club and the Illinois Retired Teachers Association. In addition to her husband, Mrs. Berkley is survived by her daughters, Amy (Philip) Ellis, Rita (Bryan) Williamson and Laura Berkley, her mother, Rita Gould, a brother, George Gould Jr., two sisters, Sara Cinebulk and Suzie (Robert) Leib, three grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her father, George Gould. Elm Leaves (Elmwood Park, IL) - Wednesday, January 28, 1998 Family links: Spouse: James W. Berkley (1920 - 2008) Burial: Nixon Township Cemetery Weldon De Witt County Illinois, USA
 

Margaret Casey

Teacher, World Traveler Margaret Casey Dies at 96
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 29, 2004

"I love to study, I love to read and I love the classroom," Margaret Mary Casey told an interviewer a few years ago. She was 90 at the time and had been studying, reading and teaching for most of her long life.

Ms. Casey, 96, for many years an English teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, died Aug. 12 at her home in Silver Spring. She had fibrotic lung disease.

She was born on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, in Pawcatuck, Conn., the second of five children of Irish immigrants Patrick Francis Casey of Upper Tennis and Bridget Mary O'Leary of Glenerah. She grew up in a three-story home in Cumberland Hill, R.I., with aunts, uncles and cousins across the street and a magnificent orchard she always loved in the back yard.

As a youngster and as a teacher, her year always began in September. "As a child I could think of nothing more rewarding than a new dress, a new taffeta hair ribbon, a new pair of shoes, a new pencil box and a new grade," she wrote in a journal she kept for many years.

Ms. Casey was a 1930 graduate of Seton Hill College in Greensburg, Pa., where she was a Greek and Latin major and an English minor. She began her career as a fourth-grade teacher at Cumberland Hill Grammar School and then accepted a position in the English department of Cumberland Hill High School.

Teaching in the midst of the Depression, she once went for a year without pay, and, when she did get paid, she used the money to help her father make sure her brother and sister could attend college as well. She also was working at the time toward her master's degree in English, which she received from Rhode Island College of Education in 1935.

A lifelong traveler, Ms. Casey celebrated her new degree by taking a six-week cross-country bus trip. She camped out in tents, rode a donkey into the Grand Canyon and viewed Yosemite National Park.

In later years, she trekked across Europe, visited every significant literary and historical site in England and took trips to Egypt, India, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the Himalayas. She celebrated her 65th birthday by going on an African safari.

Ms. Casey attended Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont, where her teacher was poet Robert Frost. She received a master's degree from Middlebury in the 1940s.

She also studied at the William Butler Yeats School in Sligo, Ireland, and took courses in English at Oxford University and George Washington University, philosophy at Catholic University, Italian at Georgetown University and Spanish at Boston University.

She moved to Silver Spring in 1941 and taught English at Sherwood High School from 1941 to 1945.

For the next 23 years, she taught at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, where she was chairman of the English department. In 1965, Yale University named her one of the four best secondary-school teachers in the United States. She retired in 1968 so she could see more of the world.

A former student recalled in a newspaper profile of Ms. Casey that "she had a strong aura of authority in the classroom but never raised her voice. She was always available to students, but never 'chummy.' "

During the 1970s, she taught English to immigrants from Vietnam, China and Cambodia, working with her students individually on the front porch of her Silver Spring home. In the 1980s, she taught a young woman from Iran and two doctors from Mexico. Throughout her retirement, former students dropped by to visit; many came from across the country to attend her funeral.

In 1999, at age 91, she visited Norman, Okla., on a 3,000-mile cross-country trip. One of her former students, David L. Boren, the former U.S. senator who had become president of the University of Oklahoma, arranged for her to speak at a luncheon at the university.

During his congressional career, Boren had made it a point to invite Ms. Casey to be in the audience whenever he and his colleagues were scheduled to vote on significant legislation. He had dedicated a park bench to her on her 88th birthday, with a brass plaque honoring the teacher who had been the most inspirational of his life.

Being a teacher was "the only thing I ever wanted to do my whole life," Ms. Casey told the Bethesda-Chevy Chase student newspaper in 1998.

Survivors include her sisters, Eleanor M. Casey and W. Doris Poole, both of Silver Spring.

 

P. J. DALLA SANTA

 

Reported by Elizabeth Layton Wheaton

(some of you will remember her as one of our English teachers):
 
P.J. Dalla Santa was born on April 28, 1930.  He died on April 28, 2009, in Lakeland, FL.
 
"P.J. Dalla Santa taught English and Drama at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.  He and I retired from teaching in 1982 and maintained contact through daily e-mails until he died April 28. It was his 79th birthday! He will always be remembered for the plays he produced. DAMN YANKEES was one of his first.  He attended Mass every Friday and reported always that he had included me in those prayers.  He was cremated, according to his directions, and his ashes were spread over the Gulf of Mexico."
 

 

Ralph P. Iacangelo

Ralph P. Iacangelo,  80, a former biology and chemistry teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, died of cancer Nov. 17 at Holy Cross Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. He had lived in Silver Spring.

He taught at Bethesda-Chevy Chase from 1950 to 1979 and served for a time as department chairman. He continued to substitute teach there until 1993.

Diana Hines Heard

 

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ENGLISH TEACHER DIANA HINES HEARD 56, DIES

56, an English teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School for more than 30 years, died of complications of pneumonia Feb. 3, 1987, at Suburban Hospital. She lived in Gaithersburg.  Miss Heard was the senior faculty member at the high school, and during her career had taught many of the school's current faculty members as well as the parents of some of her recent students. She had served on faculty liaison and social committees and as an adviser to school service clubs. She was the faculty sponsor for the ninth grade, which included responsibility for student activities. Except for one year at a Defense Department high school in Germany, Miss Heard spent her entire teaching career at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

Miss Heard was born in Gulfport, Miss., and graduated from Duke University. She had master's degrees from The Breadloaf School of English at Middlebury College and George Washington University.

She was a member of the American Association of University Women, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Maryland State Teachers Association, the Montgomery County Education Association, Teachers of English of Montgomery County and the Montgomery Village Citizens Association.

Survivors include her mother, Mrs. W.R. Heard of Gulfport.

Ray O. Zimmerman

 

Ray O. Zimmerman,   81,

an educator and administrator who retired from the Montgomery County school system as director of the department of school services, died of congestive heart failure Aug. 30 at home in Bethesda.

Mr. Zimmerman began his career in education in 1946 as a mathematics teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Later he was a guidance counselor and a vice principal there. In 1965, he left B-CC to become principal of North Bethesda Junior High School, then moved to the school system's administrative offices in Rockville, where he retired in 1974.

 He was survived by his wife of 55 years, Dorothy Zimmerman of Bethesda; two daughters, Sandra Zimmerman of Washington and Dee Taylor of Bethesda; and two grandchildren

 
 
CHARLES R. BRYANT, History Teacher
 
I was looking thru the teacher memory section and remembered my favorite History Teacher, Charles Bryant…here’s the info on his passing.  Thought we might add it to the list.
This man was the coolest teacher EVER!  Gave me a lifelong appreciate of context of historical events as well as their consequences.  Amazing.  As a lifelong gardener myself, I can appreciate a fellow devotee…wish I had known this before.

Charles R. Bryant died Monday, Feb 28, 1998
in Leicester, NC at age 71. He was the youngest
of 11 children of Horace and Cordella Hatley
Bryant of Braggadocio, MO. Mr. Bryant was a
veteran of World War II. After retiring as a
teacher, he moved to the mountains of North
Carolina in 1983. “Since gardening was Charles'
hobby, we chose a place in the country near
Asheville - a great little city,” says Dorothy
Bryant, his wife of 45 years. Charles was a
Master Gardener, and volunteer at the N.C.
Arboretum. He was a member of the Unitarian
Church of Asheville.

Irene Creed