Educator and history-making mountain climber Fay Fuller

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Educator and history-making mountain climber Fay Fuller

There are many fine teachers who have distinguished themselves in fields outside of education. One of these is Evelyn Fay Fuller, a teacher who was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Rainier.

Evelyn was born on October 10, 1869, in New Jersey. As a child, her family called her Fay. When young Fay was just twelve years old, her family moved to Tacoma in the state of Washington. Even as a child, Fay expressed great interest in exploring wilderness areas.

In 1885, at the end of Fay’s sophomore year, her high school closed abruptly. The fifteen-year-old continued her education on her own, while simultaneously teaching children at Tacoma’s Longfellow Elementary School.

Later Fay accepted teaching positions at Rosedale and at Yelm in Washington. While teaching in Yelm, famed mountain climber Philemon Van Trump visited her school. He had earned the distinction of being one of the first climbers to ascend nearby Mount Rainer. The pair soon became good friends.

Through Van Trump’s influence, the intrepid young teacher set herself the goal of climbing to the summit of Mount Rainier. She made her first attempt to climb the mountain in 1887. To prepare for the climb, Fay blackened her face with charcoal and wore goggles to reduce the sun’s glare. Her climbing outfit included heavy flannel underwear, a thick blue flannel bloomer suit, woolen hose, heavy calfskin boy’s shoes, and a straw hat. She later commented that her costume was assembled “at the time when bloomers were unknown, and it was considered quite immodest.”

On her first climb, Fay reached an elevation of 8,600 feet. Three years later, on August 10, 1890, the intrepid 21-year-old finally achieved her goal of reaching the summit. She was the first woman to make the climb successfully. As the story goes, the next party to climb the mountain found Fay’s hair pins on the trail and joked that the find proved a woman really had made it to the summit!

Shortly after her history-making climb, Fay left the teaching profession to go into journalism. She became the first woman reporter for the Tacoma Ledger, where she wrote a column covering mountaineering news. She also became instrumental in founding alpine clubs in Tacoma and in Portland, Oregon.

In 1900, Fay relocated to Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York City, where she continued her career as a journalist. In New York she married, and the newlyweds settled in Santa Monica, California.

This amazing educator and mountain climber passed away in Los Angeles on May 27, 1958. She was 88 years old. She is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. After her passing, Fay Peak in Mount Rainier National Park was named in her honor.

To read more about Fay’s climb, read this article published by the Historylink.org.

Two-time All-American softball player, teacher, and coach Sara Loete

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Two-time college All-American softball player Sara Loete teaches and coaches in Evansville, Indiana.

There are many examples of fine athletes who have also distinguished themselves in the classroom. One of these is two-time All-American softball player Sara Loete. She is now a high school history teacher and coach in Pekin, Indiana.

Sara was born on February 10, 1988, in Rock Island, Rock Island County, Illinois. She was raised in Pekin, Tazewell County, Illinois. As a teenager, Sara attended Pekin High School in her home town. While there, she was named a member of the All-Conference first team. She earned second-team All-Area honors as a senior after recording a .515 batting average. She earned Most Valuable Player honors in each of her last two seasons. In addition, her senior year, Sara earned honors as a national qualifying political speaker and the captain of the speech team.

Sara started playing softball when she was very young. “I actually started playing baseball when I was six years old,” she once recalled. “When I was nine and the boys started pitching, my mom wanted me to play softball. I’ve played ever since!”

After her high school graduation in 2006, Sara enrolled at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, as a pre-med biology major. “After quickly realizing my passion was not in medicine, but rather in teaching, I changed my major to Secondary Education with a concentration in History,” Sara remembers. At the end of her freshman year, she transferred to the University of Southern Indiana. While studying there, she played the position of designated hitter on the university’s softball team. Her efforts on the field earned her a position as the Illinois State hitting derby finalist and, in her junior year, she became a sectional champion. In 2011, Sara graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in History and Social Science with a minor in Psychology. In 2014 she earned a Master’s degree in Education at Arkansas State University.

Once she completed her education, Sara accepted a position teaching world history, psychology, and English at William Henry Harrison High School in Evansville, Indiana. In addition to her classroom duties, she coaches the school’s softball, volleyball, and speech teams. She also serves as the adviser for her school’s Link Crew.

To view Sara’s teacher website, click on this link: Miss Loete’s Website.

President LBJ: Teacher of English-Language Learners

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President Lyndon B. Johnson, our nation’s 36th president, was a teacher for English-language learners in Texas before he went to Washington, DC.

The role of Lyndon B. Johnson as our nation’s 36th president is well-known, but did you know that he used to be a school teacher? Before he went to Washington, DC, LBJ taught English language learners at a junior high school in Texas.

In 1928, LBJ needed a way to pay for his education at Southwest Texas State College. To do this, he accepted a position as a teacher at Welhausen School in Cotulla, Texas, a town on the US southern border. There he taught English as a second language to Spanish-speaking junior high school students.

Despite the language barrier between himself and his students, the future president proved to be an enthusiastic and inspirational teacher, organizing speech and debate tournaments and other activities to help the youngsters learn English. “I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School,” Johnson once remarked. “I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American,” he said.

When LBJ became president in 1963, he didn’t forget his days as an educator. While in office, he passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. The legislation granted federal aid to students in elementary grades to achieve his goal of ensuring that every child received a quality education.

To read LBJ’s own words about his teaching experiences, follow this link to “LBJ the Teacher” on Humanities Texas.