2 educators who left their mark on Butler
Teaching can be like planting a tree — teachers know what they do is important, but also know they might never see the end result of their work.
Some are lucky enough to get the chance, though, especially if they spend years and decades in the same school system.
So it was for two educators who each spent nearly 50 years working in the Butler schools, one a principal and the other the district superintendent.
Emily Brittain was born and raised in Butler, and attended city schools in the middle of the 19th century. In 1876, at age 18, Brittain started to work for the school district where she'd been educated, and she would spend the rest of her long and storied career there.
Brittain taught at the Jefferson Street and McKean Street schools, and became the principal of the schools in 1886.
In a 1981 Butler Eagle article on women in Butler County, Ruth Jones wrote about how Brittain was remembered.
“Reports showed that Miss Brittain governed by the force of her personality and with a quiet voice,” Jones wrote. “She was positive, decisive, knew what she wanted to achieve and how to accomplish it. The teachers liked and respected her, took their problems to her, and went away with a better opinion of themselves.”
When Brittain finally retired in 1922, she'd spent almost half a century educating both Butler's students and Butler's teachers. An article about her retirement in the Eagle praised the effect she'd had.
“Miss Brittain has been conspicuously a teacher of teachers,” the article reads. “The hundreds of teachers who have served under her kindly and efficient supervision bear deep gratitude for her never-failing aid and direction in all difficulties. The entire school system of this city has relied so greatly on her native intuitive powers as a teacher and supervisor and counselor in all fields of school endeavor that her retirement will be felt as a serious loss.”
It wouldn't be long before Brittain's contributions were recognized in a more substantial way. in 1935, community members raised $100 to install a plaque at the Jefferson Street school where she had been principal.
The plaque now hangs at Emily Brittain Elementary, which was built in 1955, 10 years after Brittain died at age 97.
During renovations to that building in 2001 the paperwork from the dedication was found, including tributes community donors offered to Brittain, as well as her response to being honored.
“How deeply I appreciation what you have all done for me is beyond my ability to express,” she wrote in a letter. “I can only hope I am worth of such honor.”
The person she wrote the letter to, Butler school superintendent John A. Gibson, certainly thought so. His speech from the 1935 dedication of the plaque still survives and is reproduced on the Emily Brittain Elementary website.
“During the twenty-six years in which Miss Brittain and myself served together as Principal and Superintendent, I found her possessed of a native intuition and skill in conduct of school affairs which was distinctly unique,” Gibson said. “She was 'to the manor born.' Her presence in the school room was modest and unassuming but her influence was directive and powerful. She smoothed a way for parents, pupils, teachers, and Superintendent. She inspired, not by demand or direction, but by sympathy and suggestion. Interviews with her were sought by others rather than imposed.”
Gibson was hired as high school principal in 1891 and became superintendent of schools five years later, meaning when he spoke on that night in 1935, he had already spent more than 40 years working for Butler schools.
He would retire two years later, stepping down in 1937. And in November of that year he would himself be honored with a plaque — and by having the high school building he had overseen the construction of renamed in his honor.
During the ceremony to unveil the plaque, D. Breaden Douthett, vice president of the Butler school board, praised Gibson's dedication to students.
“Regardless of what the discussion might be about the child always stood out,” Douthett said. “He wanted to give the child — and did give him — the best that he could with the funds available.”
Another speaker that night was a friend and former student of Gibson's at Butler High School. Frederick S. Breed graduated in 1895 and then went on to become associate professor of education at the University of Chicago.
Breed praised Gibson's work as a teacher and leader.
“As you go into retirement from active service in the public schools, you have the sincere thanks and good wishes of thousands of former pupils, including myself, whose lives have been oriented and directed for the better,” Breed told Gibson.
Breed praised Gibson as resisting trends and instead focusing on objective standards for education.
During his speech, after he took the audience through a brief history of schools in Butler, Gibson said he hoped eventually to see high school expanded to five or six years, so students could achieve more. He offered a strikingly modern ideal for that hypothetical school to strive for.
“The opportunity for every child to realize what is within him.”
John Gibson’s speech honoring Emily Brittain
We are delighted to do honor to one whose life was devoted so fully and with such conspicuous success to the Butler Public Schools. Miss Brittain entered the schools as a pupil in the old stone Academy building, where the Jefferson Street building now stands, in 1863. She completed the course of instruction in the Butler Public Schools in 1875. She became a teacher in the schools in 1876 and served as such until 1888. At this latter date she became a Principal and continued to serve as such until 1922.
Hence, she was identified with the Butler Public Schools as student, twelve years; teacher, twelve years; and principal, thirty-four years or a total of fifty-eight years. This record has no parallel and in all probability never will have a parallel in the history of the local schools.
The inscription place on the tablet in her honor states that she was a teacher and teacher of teachers. There are many in my presence here this evening who sat under her as a teacher and who endorse this tribute to her as a teacher with enthusiasm. There are many present who served under her as a Principal; in all, a considerable portion of the present teaching force of the Butler Public Schools. I am assured that all these join in paying tribute to Miss Brittain as a teacher of teachers.
There are other truthful inscriptions that might have been added to this tablet of honor. It could truthfully be said that Miss Brittain was an advisor of Superintendents. Butler has had but two superintendents of its schools, Mr. Ebenezer Mackey, my predecessor, and myself. I have vivid personal recollections of the high esteem in which Miss Brittain’s services were held by Mr. Mackey. I recall that upon assuming the duties of Superintendent as Mr. Mackey’s successor, he advised me to counsel with Miss Brittain as a source of helpful guidance in directing the schools. During the twenty-six years in which Miss Brittain and myself served together as Principal and Superintendent, I found her possessed of a native intuition and skill in conduct of school affairs which was distinctly unique. She was “to the manor born.” Her presence in the school room was modest and unassuming but her influence was directive and powerful. She smoothed a way for parents, pupils, teachers, and Superintendent. She inspired, not by demand or direction, but by sympathy and suggestion. Interviews with her were sought by others rather than imposed.
She had a keen appreciation of the law of diminishing returns, knew how far to pursue details, and how soon to desert them. She comprehended the placing of first things first. She had a sense of essentials. She refused to be embarrassed or deterred by inconsequentials.
Her former teachers pay her this tribute. Her conferences, as her visits to the classroom, were introduced with her smile and invariably concluded with mutual understanding. Her social contacts were occasions of good will and helpful cheer.
She possessed keen perception of the success of the pupil. In the old Jefferson Street Building with an enrollment of 500 or more, there probably would not be a half dozen pupils with whose progress she was not definitely familiar.
While she was diligent on her own account and through the direction of her teachers in securing advancement of pupils in the master of their specific subjects, she possessed something vastly beyond this. She knew the moral way. She trod that journey herself and had intuitive power in directing others.
We need our heroes. They constitute the anchorage of the generations. They are the guide lights on the path upward that humanity has trod. We delight to honor them because, basically, we must honor them. If we do not, we lose direction. We educators unite in tribute to the heroes, the doers in other fields. We have also a duty to be self-conscious of the heroes in our own profession and memorialize those who led the van in the generations that have passed.
I am certain that all those present desire to unite with me in expressing the highest appreciation of the services which Miss Brittain has rendered the schools of the community and the community itself. We hope that this meeting and the tablet to be erected in her honor in the Jefferson Street Building will come to her as an appreciation which will give her a rightful enjoyment of achievement which her life efforts have won.
Miss Brittain and I served together for some quarter of a century under Dr. Nathan C. Schaeffer as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Dr. Schaeffer devoted his life in full as an educator. As the twilight came, he expressed himself thus:
“When we come to the close of life, the question is not how much we have got but how much have we given, not how much we have won, but how much have we done, not how have we saved, but how much have we sacrificed, not how much we have been honored, but how much have we loved and how much have we served!”
Measured by this standard, Miss Brittain’s life work was an achievement whose depth we have no plummet to fathom and whose content we have no balance to weigh. Its worth can only be meted in the inscrutable values of intellectual light and moral power.
