Mary
Connell Woodward died on June 18, at her residence at Kendal at Longwood where
she had lived since 1984. She was 94 years old.??
Born
Aug. 3, 1915, in Covington, Ky., she was a lifelong resident of West Chester
and Chester County.??
She
was the daughter of William F. and Mary Meyer Connell. She grew up in West
Chester and was a 1933 graduate of West Chester High School.??
Receiving
her undergraduate degree in elementary education in 1937 from West Chester
State Teachers' College (now West Chester University), she later went on to do
graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Maine.??
She
began her teaching career in 1937 at a rural one-room school in Compass, where
she taught all eight grades. Most of her students there were drawn from the
local Amish community. The school schedule followed the farming season with
gaps during the year while the students worked during planting and harvesting.
In addition to her students, regular classroom visitors included sheep, goats,
dogs, and the occasional calf, colt or mule.??
She
then moved to the two-room school in Elverson, where she taught grades one
through three. During World War II she taught in the Ridley Township, Delaware
County public schools. Most of her students were the children of war workers
from Appalachia brought to the shipyards on the Delaware River. Many of those
children had never been to school before and she felt working with them was one
of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of her teaching career. In
1954 she began teaching at Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, Del. She
taught there for 25 years until her retirement in 1979. In her early years at
Friends she taught fifth grade, and then moved to teaching middle school math
and social studies. While at Friends she served on numerous faculty committees,
including search committees for headmaster.??
In
the summer of 1965 and in later summers, during the early stages of the federal
War on Poverty, she taught in Chester County's Project Head Start program in
New Garden and West Chester. While with Head Start she saw the harsh realities
of rural poverty of a sort that she had not seen since growing up in the Great
Depression. She was firm in her commitment to racial and social equality, and
saw education as a means to foster that equality.??
She
was a member of Birmingham Friends Meeting for over 70 years, serving for many
years on its religious education committee and teaching First Day School. She
was also a member of the Birmingham Forum and the New Century Club of West
Chester.??
She
is survived by two sons, Roland H. Woodward and his wife Faith and Stephen B.
Woodward and his wife Ann B. Brown, all of West Chester. Also surviving are her
granddaughters, Rebecca Woodward Tabbutt, her husband Joe Tabbutt and their
daughter Anna Hope Tabbutt, all of Parkesburg, Hannah C. Woodward of New York
City, Sarah M. Woodward of West Chester and her step-granddaughter Laura K.
Woolford of West Chester. She is also survived by her very close friends Randy
and Barbara Davis Bovbjerg and their sons Chris and Matt, all of Washington,
D.C., as well as by several nieces, nephews and cousins.??
She
was predeceased by her former husband, Roland McCullough Woodward, her brother
John A. Connell, her sister Katherine C. Wiswesser and her daughter-in-law Anne
Spivey Woodward.??
A
memorial meeting for worship will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 17, at
Birmingham Friends Meeting, 1245 Birmingham Road, West Chester. Interment will
be private at Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery.??
In
lieu of flowers, her family suggests contributions to the Kendal at Longwood
Resident Assistance Entry Fee Fund, P.O. Box 100, Kennett Square, PA 19348; or
Wilmington Friends School, 101 School Road, Wilmington, DE 19803.??Arrangements
are by the DellaVecchia, Reilly, Smith & Boyd Funeral Home Inc., West
Chester, 610-696-1181, www.DellaFH.com.
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