| DMH Spotlight - The life's work of Eula Bannister, one-room school teacher in rural Vermont | Back |
In these years looking back on a lifetime of photography, one of the greatest pleasures and rewards is reconnecting with the people photographed. The most recent highlight and sure to remain one of the most outstanding re-encounters has been with Mrs. Richard - Eula- Bannister in Hancock, VT. While we look for an archive for her legacy of remarkable document collection, some of its highlights are presented here. Please email us for more information on how to contact Mrs. Bannister with possiblities for the collection. Please enjoy the following scrapbook, including a love-story, a crush, a dress-up mock wedding, transcripts, evaluations, contracts, certificates, credits Eula accrued for a cross-country trip and a trip to ENgland, and Jessica Demers' writings at age 7 and again for her college entrance essay about the one-room school...
Eula Bannister's student told her about his cousin, Richard BAnnister, away at war in the Pacific...As Eula was writing to about four dozen men in the Armed Forces as a service commitment, she added him to the list. When he returned on leave, they met and were married..."that is the sailor with whom I chose to spend my life...."
From 1983, when Diana Mara Henry photographed Eula Bannister, a tribute from student Fay Leavitt says it all!
Eula Achieved her Castleton Normal College teaching certificate in 1943, and began to teach that year when not yet 18; she received her BS in 1978.
A mock wedding that she held with the students at the Shady Rill School, with the oldest boy playing the part and dressed up as the bride.
Eula certainly deserved all the awards, only a sample of which are here...More here, including her Vermont Outstanding Teacher Award....t
Ad for Eula's replacement in the local paper:
IN 1932, the year she was seven, Eula Goodyear's family boarded the Hancock Branch School teacher, shown here at left...
Some of Eula Bannister's grade reports from the State Normal School, Castleton.
On the way to receiving her BS 30 years after starting to teach, Eala Bannister accrued more credits in some very unusual ways....
Of course, her evaluations were always excellent...This is from the year Diana Mara Henry photographed he..r
Thank you, Eula! Please email us with your suggestions for an archive for this precious legacy, a collection about 1 and a half feet of shelf space and encapsulating a whole lifetime of rural schoolteaching....Or to be in touch with Eula directly. I estimate that there are at least three dozen articles in her files about her teaching and the schools where she taught, as well as book and magazine stories about her teaching with her photograph. There are maybe three long typed scholarly interviews, her teaching evaluations and contracts , her communications to students and parents, and the whole archive is about a foot of documentation. I took a couple of cell phone pictures of her standing in front of a display of ceramic figurines of herself, her students, and her schoolhouse that was done by an admiring parent, and also with the photo of three generations of her family at the Hancock Branch one-room school where she also taught and attended for eight years.