East High School - Redjacket Yearbook (Pawtucket, RI)

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■ MYRA B. BOOTH

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Mary G. Osborn ALT HOUGH the span of life is lengthening, it is yet given to few to follow a calling for half a century, much less the teaching profession, perhaps, where inside alloy and outside allure cut across continuity of career. Of these few was numbered Mary George Osborn, who taught in the Pawtucket High school for forty-six years and whose teaching assignments rounded out five decades. She came to our high school in April. 1895, and taught English for the remainder of the school year. The following term, however, she began to teach history and throughout the years her name and history courses have been spoken in the same breath. In his report of 1895, Principal William W. Curtis pointed out “the whole number registered during the year 283. Thirty-five pupils were graduated in June. T his is the largest class in the history of the school. When Mary Osborn completed the school year in 1940 the graduating class consisted of 666 pupils—333 boys and 333 girls, mirabile dictu—and the senior high school faculty of 1 16 teachers, plus, of course, for purposes of comparison, some of the 134 teachers of the junior high schools. So at the beginning and at the end of her teaching career in Pawtucket Miss Osborn taught the largest graduating class. In passing it may be noted that among those graduated in 1895, in the college preparatory course, was Myra Budlong Booth, later to become associated for years with Miss Osborn in teaching at the high school. Mary G. Osborn was by training, disposition and endowment naturally fitted for teaching. And teaching was naturally adopted as a vocation by her sister, Sarah M. Osborn, who came to the high school in 1905 as teacher of Latin. They were both the daughters of Rev. Joseph W. and Martha (George) Osborn. Mary was born in Grantham. New Hampshire, October 24. 1863. The family moved eight months later to Swansea. Massachusetts. The father, who had received his A.B. and A.M. degrees from Lebanon College and Ph.D. from Union College, had entered the ministry and was called to the pastorate of the Christian Church in Swansea. Mary was graduated from the Warren. Rhode Island, High School and the Rhode Island Normal School—now Rhode Island College of Education. Then she taught in the district school in Swansea and later in Barrington. Rhode Island. She entered Wellesley College, but left when her father died, and taught for a year in the Warren High School. She returned to Wellesley and received her A.B. in 1892. Then she taught in the high schools in Lee and Braintree, Massachusetts. before coming to Pawtucket in 1895. At Wellesley she had majored in English and history, at Brown in 1900 she received her A.M. in history, and it is with history that her name is inseparably associated with our high school. At Wellesley she had been a member of the Shakespeare Society and was especially interested in English literature. But when she planned for an A.B. and found Greek was required, she completed three years of preparatory Greek in one year in addition to her regular college work—a record unsurpassed at Wellesley before or since. She had a keen sense of values. She appraised. she evaluated, she got behind the events themselves for a broad picture of conditions and causes. She had the knowledge and information herself, but more than that, she was a real teacher and could impart them to her pupils. She appreciated always the sense of humor in history and had a fund of apropos stories and incidents to illustrate, accentuate, emphasize and impress. She kept abreast of history by continued study even in vacation, wrote but little for outside publications, and devoted her time, energy and knowledge to her school work. She went outside only to teach at St. Paul's Sunday School, and there she taught church and mission history for 1 5 years, until 1938. When June, 1940, passed she planned as usual to return to Pawtucket High School in September; but illness prevented, and six months later. March 20. 1941. the Great Teacher beckoned, the East High bells faded and Mary G. Osborn joined a higher faculty where tenure is eternal. James G. Connolly. 1905

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Myra Budlong Booth SOMEHOW 1 could never think of Miss Booth as merely a teacher. She was something more, something different, almost of a race apart. Yet she had, of course, all the attributes necessary for making a success of her teaching career. She commanded respect. She was a source of constant inspiration. She had succeeded in marrying a ready wit with the toleration of wisdom. She loved her subject and made her students love it with her. But all these qualities were secondary to her excellent taste and her critical ability. This amazing critical ability was manifested not only in her discussions of literature but also in her treatment of people. Too many of us. far too many of us, have the ability only to criticize subjectively. Miss Booth had an objective yardstick which measured with uncanny accuracy the pupils with whom she came in contact. No person who made an honest and sincere effort to learn was ever found wanting according to her system of measurement, but woe be to him who failed to give his utmost. On such occasions the subject of her righteous indignation would depart, a chastened but wiser young man. She brought a certain eagerness and a vivacious. sparkling enthusiasm to whatever was the task of the moment, were it the reading of a scene from Macbeth or the recitation of a nursery rhyme, the elucidation of a deeply hidden allusion in Milton or a sardonic discourse on Herrick's conception of the transitoriness of life. She could spend an hour telling of the benefits of a classical education, and another hour telling of the merits of novelists and poets on the contemporary scene. The range of her knowledge was surprisingly wide, yet she possessed the humility and toleration that is associated with true wisdom. She is mourned by her associates, but is mourned much more deeply by her former students, recipients as they were of the charms of her inspiring personality. Elmer M. Blistein, ’38