Ypsilanti High School - Ypsi Dixit Yearbook (Ypsilanti, MI)

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f Pli0FES4OR :XUSTIX G'EOR4iE

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EDICATICN late SUPT AUSTIN GEORGE by whose untir- ing efforts the schools of 0 the memory of the Ypsilanti have been raised to so high a degree of efficiency, this volume is respectfully dedicated.

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Superintendent Austin George. UPERIN'1'END13NT GEORGE was a man of varied interests and activities. He was a man among men, citizen among citizens, a public officer 'for some time of the city. We cannot speak of him in all of these relations in a brief paper. It is not our purpose to give a biography of his life. A public school paper naturally takes notice of him as a public school man and speaks chiefiy of his work in the Ypsilanti public schools. He was a Michigan man, receiving his early education in the public schools of the state. He had an opportunity to know the schools through and through during his life. He was educated for the work of a teacher in the Normal School under the superintendency of Professor A. S. VVelch, and he gradu- ated from the school in the spring of 1863 and did his first teaching after graduation in the high school of Kalamazoo. Thetthen superintendent of the Kalamazoo schools writes thus of him: In the spring of 1863 there came to my home in Kala- mazoo to assume a responsible position in the schools of which I had charge, a young man fresh from the Normal School of Ypsilanti. I had no personal acquaintance with him, nor with his fitness for the work he was to do. He came upon the recom- mendation of Professor XVelch, then principalof the school, whose judgment had been trusted to select such a teacher as was needed. The young man of two and twenty was Austin George. The judgment of Professor NVelch was justified. The abounding physical vitality, the vivacity of speech. the quickness to perceive the needful and appropriate, the desire and readiness to help whenever and wherever help was needed, the capacity for work-all of these qualities combined to bring about a strong mutual regard. ripening in due time into lasting friendship. After teaching for a time in the Kalamazoo schools, Mr. George pursued higher studies in the University of Michigan and at Kalamazoo College, from which institution he gradu- ated. Subsequently he engaged in various kinds of business, of which it is not necessary to speak in this article. He became superintendent of the public schools of Kalamazoo in T873 and