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Real time traveler

A 93-year-old retired educator volunteers and writes letters every day to keep her mind sharp and continue touching lives.

By EMILY NIPPS
Published June 9, 2006

UNIVERSITY AREA - Jean Patrick sits in her small apartment in John Knox Village and she writes.

In impeccable cursive, or sometimes on her old Royal Standard manual typewriter, she composes letters to local newspapers, civic clubs, former students, former colleagues, pharmaceutical companies, anyone who will listen.

She has a lot of wisdom to share.

At 93, Patrick draws from almost a century of experiences and memories that include 45 years of teaching elementary school children in Hillsborough County. She took the streetcar to get to the old Lutz School, where she taught children of orange grove workers, some of whom didn't own shoes.

She taught, and later became principal, at Drew Park School for Retarded Citizens later renamed La Voy Exceptional Center. She taught children how to read, write and find Africa on a globe at Tampa Heights' Lee Elementary. She counseled and comforted 12 years of parents at Forest Hills Elementary.

"I'm not being Pollyanna-ish," Patrick said. "But I never found a child that did not want to learn."

So even at her age, 23 years after retiring from school, she's not finished. She volunteers at local schools, tutoring and mentoring children a couple of days a week. She has written several published articles on education and Tampa history. She wants to learn more and share more, so she just recently learned how to use a computer and the Internet.

She's often an advocate for people her age and writes letters speaking out on the subject of medical and elderly care.

"She writes every single day," said her daughter, Maureen Patrick.

Taking action to improve her situation is nothing new to Jean Patrick. As a female immigrant, she grew used to breaking barriers, especially during the pre- and post-World War II eras.

And that was after she lived through an earthquake, World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic as a child in Italy. While her entire family was sick, she taught herself how to cook and care for the home at age 5. "A wonderful childhood," she recalls.

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Patrick's family emigrated to the United States in 1922, when she was 10 years old. After attending school through the ninth grade, she did what many children did during the Great Depression: She got a job.

For three years, she worked in her parents' grocery store in Pennsylvania.

"I hated it," Patrick said. "One day, I told my daddy, 'I'm going to go to college and become a teacher.' He said, 'You can't. You only have a ninth-grade education.'

"I said, 'Watch me.' "

Patrick completed her next few years of high school in just over a year, then enrolled in Indiana State Teachers College (teaching colleges were the standard in the 1930s).

She taught in Pennsylvania for five years before marrying her husband, Albert, and moving to Tampa in 1940.

She became pregnant not long before her husband was called to serve in World War II. Two years later, after giving birth to her daughter Jeannie, she went back to work.

Patrick taught junior high at Lutz School, then later developed new methods for teaching and training mentally handicapped children at Drew Park (La Voy). She was principal of Henderson, Cahoon, Graham and Lois elementary schools, then retired as principal of Forest Hills. At Lois, Patrick was among the school district's first advocates to create classes for academically gifted children.

Even more remarkable than her career accomplishments was the timing of them. As a woman of Latin descent, she created opportunities for herself that were considered near impossible in Tampa at the time.

"Tampa was very Jim Crow when she came here in the 1940s, and that kind of shocked her," said daughter Maureen, who is president of the Tampa Historical Society. "As an immigrant and an Italian, she felt discriminated against in a lot of ways. At the time, there was a big divide between mainstream white Tampa vs. Latin Tampa."

It was also rare for a woman to have a more prominent position and earn more money than her husband. While Albert Patrick taught at Sarasota High and later was a successful salesman, Jean was better known in the community and was a faster climber in the workforce.

"My father was not only supportive of her, but he was very proud of her," Maureen said.

"She's a groundbreaker in every single area of her life."

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Albert Patrick died almost four years ago, and Jean is still grieving. But she stays active by driving to her old neighborhood in Seminole Heights, taking her dog to the vet, travelling to Canada to visit family and shopping at the flea market. She also keeps her mind sharp by writing, writing, writing every day.

In her apartment at John Knox Village, a retirement facility near University of South Florida, there are mementos everywhere from her long teaching career.

A globe sits in the corner, a symbol of her passion for geography. A Webster's dictionary, a thesaurus and a World Atlas Book sit on a shelf. A pillow covered in schoolchildren's signatures lies on her sofa. She keeps letters and postcards from former students, newspaper clippings from her teaching days, copies of speeches she gave as a principal, and plaques and medals for her volunteer work.

In her last speech before she retired in 1983, a farewell address to Forest Hills Elementary staff and parents, she wrote about watching all of her children grow and become members of society and all of her teachers achieve their goals.

She wrote about being "reprimanded, yelled at, questioned, doubted, respected, complimented, liked and loved a great deal."

She wrote about memories with custodians, parents, supervisors.

"How do you say goodbye to all of these and embark on a new highway?" Patrick wrote.

"You don't."

Emily Nipps can be reached at (813) 269-5313 or nipps@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 9, 2006, 08:44:59]