By SUZANNAH COUCH AND SARA CLIFFORD
Within two weeks, Brown County Schools lost two longtime educators who have left a lasting impact on their students, co-workers and community.
On April 4, Carol Walker passed away. Janice Cassiday passed on April 15.
Walker was principal in Brown County Schools for 17 years and served as superintendent for eight years. Cassiday was an English teacher at the high school and theater director.
Both women worked to establish the auditorium at Brown County High School.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]At the Brown County Schools Board of Trustees meeting April 18, Superintendent Laura Hammack took a moment to recognize and thank both women for their time with the school district.
“I loved her deeply,” Hammack said about Walker.
“My conversation with Carol last was that she said, ‘Go get ‘em.’ She had that fierce spirit and was just such a joy to be around. She is genuinely going to be missed.”
The high school’s theater program was “sincerely impacted by Janice’s legacy,” Hammack said.
“The extraordinary impact they had on our boys and girls — they are deeply going to be missed,” she continued.
Community members had asked if the high school’s auditorium could be named in honor of both women. According to the district’s commemoration policy, the school board is to wait five years to make any kind of commemoration decision after a person has passed.
A maverick
When Walker was 6 years old, she received her first library card, and at that moment she decided she was ready for college, her obituary reads.
She considered herself a maverick.
In the 1940s, Walker left high school to attend the University of Chicago.
“I went to college when I should have been a junior in high school,” she said in a 1995 Brown County Democrat story about her retirement from the school district.
After she married, she left college to start a family. She moved to Nashville in 1963 with her family after her husband took a job in Indianapolis.
When her youngest child started first grade, she returned to college at Indiana University in Bloomington to study to become a teacher, according to her obituary.
She earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction in elementary education in 1967. She received her master’s in 1970 and her doctorate from the IU School of Administration in 1982.
She was the first woman admitted to the doctoral program — “an amazing achievement,” Hammack said at the school board meeting.
She worked as a teacher in Bartholomew County before coming to work in Brown County Schools.
“I was a late-comer to education,” she said in the 1995 story. “I was gray-haired and my first-graders called me ‘grandma.’”
Walker loved to read to students. She used a rabbit hand puppet, “Obadiah,” to help read stories, her obituary said.
She became principal at Sprunica Elementary School in 1972 and stayed until February 1982 when she became superintendent of Brown County Schools. She was one of the first women in the state to be licensed as a superintendent, according to her obituary.
But Walker wanted to work with children again on a daily basis before she retired, so she left her job as superintendent to take over as Van Buren Elementary School principal in 1990, according to the 1995 Democrat story.
She called her time at Van Buren a “daily joy.”
When Walker retired in 1995, the entire Van Buren school population surprised her with a retirement party. One student there called her “The World’s Best Principal,” according to newspaper archives.
Each grade of students performed for Walker, singing songs and reading poetry. She was presented with flowers, a teddy bear and a handmade wall quilt. On the front of the quilt was a block each teacher made and on the back were strips of cloth each student had signed.
The same year Walker took over as VBE principal, she received an honorary diploma from Brown County High School Principal Wayne Wackowski during the 1990 commencement ceremony. Because she had left high school early to go to college, Walker had never received a diploma.
When Walker left her job as superintendent, I.E. Lewis, who was chief assistant superintendent at the time, was promoted to superintendent with former VBE principal Michael Thompson taking over as assistant superintendent.
“Brown County Schools are a direct result of Carol Walker’s hard work and leadership and dedication,” Thompson said on a Facebook post about Walker’s passing.
Others took a moment to share what Walker meant to them on Facebook.
“Dr. Walker was an amazing principal,” Aaron Harden wrote.
“(She) always had time for her students and would always give you a lollipop when you left her office. Years later I would see her out and about and she always called me by my name with a smile.”
Amy Williams-Sherman was a student at Sprunica Elementary School when Walker was principal.
“She was instrumental in helping me acclimate here when I moved from Saudi Arabia. She will forever hold a place in my heart as an amazing principal and kind and generous woman,” she wrote.
“I was lucky to have her in my life.”
Tina Bode described Walker as a “great educator” in the administration.
“She knew how to get things done and how to hire and surround herself with talent,” she wrote.
Walker had retired by the time Brown County High School Principal Matt Stark started his career in Brown County Schools, but he met and interacted with her many times since then, he wrote on Facebook.
“She listened deeply, advised with great wisdom and had such a great heart for people. She encouraged me in administration and gave me such great advice,” he wrote.
“I consider her one of my heroes and a role model as a professional and as a person.”
Walker was also an active member of St. David’s Episcopal Church for 55 years. Sandy Smith Richardson said Walker hired her to be the parish secretary at the church several years ago.
“(She is) simply one of the kindest people I have ever known,” Richardson wrote.
“She was a gracious, intelligent and nurturing woman that will be greatly missed by this community,” Rebecca Altop-Zody wrote.
“She was truly an inspiration and a source of wisdom for both of us (my sister and I). Her legacy will live on for many years,” Sherry Fagner wrote.
“Dr. Walker was an icon as an educator, principal, superintendent and friend. (She was) one of my favorite people,” Amy Kelso wrote.
Walker’s love for children continued on after she retired.
She became active with Guardian ad Litem as a court-appointed advocate for children. She was also a hospice volunteer for Columbus Regional Hospital.
She was on the Brown County Child Protection Team, Brown County Area Plan Commission and Brown County Board of Health. She worked with the YMCA, Girl Scouts and the Brown County Community Foundation. She established the Thank-A-Teacher Fund with the BCCF.
Walker was also a member of various other organizations and honorary education fraternities including Delta Kappa Gamma and Phi Delta Kappa. She was the former director of Brown County Business and Professional Women and received the Woman of the Year award in 1983. She was also the former director of the Indiana Association of School Principals.
‘A class act’
The day before she passed, Janice Cassiday took in one final performance in the theater she helped to build.
Cassiday, who taught English and drama at Brown County High School for 28 years, died April 15 in Nashville.
On April 14, she watched the children of some of her former drama students perform their final show of “Footloose” in the Brown County High School auditorium.
Cassiday instilled a love of the theater in students who might never have thought to try it.
“She put the arts on the map here in Brown County with young people that sometimes didn’t know they had it in them,” wrote her son and daughter-in-law, Sean and Anna Cassiday, in a remembrance post on Facebook. “She could take that kid one would have never thought they could act and teach them to do the most wonderful Shakespeare you have ever witnessed; and she could go to the football team and look at the coach and go, ‘I want him and him and him’ and turn them into leads in the show, with the coach changing his practice schedule to fit her play practice because she took half his team.”
“She was absolutely amazing — passionate and tireless about theater arts,” wrote former student Annette Veil. “… When we would get off course on stage, Janice would clap her hands loudly one time from the back of the theater. Even now, when I hear a single clap in a room, I check myself.”
Angela Link Stolzfus performed in four musicals under her direction. “Memories abound, but a favorite is the infamous rubber chicken that always showed up the last night of a show. She would always act so mad about it, but we all knew she really got a kick out of it,” she wrote.
To send her off upon her retirement in 2000, present and past students staged a surprise theater performance. They seated her on a throne and entertained her with skits, songs, and dances choreographed by her husband, Dale, according to a newspaper archive story. Even the rubber chicken made an appearance.
Cassiday was instrumental in helping persuade the school board to build a proper auditorium at Brown County High School instead of just a stage in a gymnasium. After her retirement, she served on the school board.
“Her love of Broadway, the arts, literature and fine dining was unbelievable and contagious,” remembered former student Lori McGee, who went on one of the drama trips she led to New York City. The Cassidays loved to travel.
“She wasn’t ever easy as a teacher; she expected more from students, and I know I appreciated her for doing this,” McGee wrote. “… She was a true class act.”
The Cassiday family came to Brown County from Chicago after her father died unexpectedly, according to an archive story about her retirement from teaching. Her parents owned land in Brown County and she and Dale came down to take care of it. They settled here with their children, Sean and Jacqueline, and, eventually, they built the Dairy Queen that used to sit at the junction of state roads 135 and 46 in Nashville.
Though she had taught at a community college in Illinois and had a master’s degree in theater from Northwestern University, Cassiday did not start teaching here right away. She worked at the Dairy Queen, but it didn’t satisfy her. When a midyear opening became available at the high school in 1972, Cassiday started teaching in the English department.
Melissa Myers still remembers things Cassiday taught her nearly 30 years ago. “Once, she said in English class that when something didn’t ‘sound right’ grammatically, that something was wrong with your ‘sounder.’” Another classmate reminded Myers that “if you asked where something ‘was at,’ she would say, ‘between the “a” and the “t”!’
“She was a tough teacher, but also fair. She didn’t tolerate nonsense, or bullies,” Myers remembered.
“Mrs. Cassiday was one of the teachers I respected most, not just at BCHS, but throughout my life,” wrote Mark Gillespie. “She never accepted the ‘easy way’ of doing things, and constantly pushed me (and all her students) to give everything 100 percent effort. Often, teachers let me slide through their classes, but I knew that when she gave me an ‘A,’ I’d earned it.”
“She was the only teacher that actually taught you how to write papers,” remembered Tina Bode. “I will never forget the 300-plus notecards to get you there.”
Cassiday inspired several students to follow in her footsteps.
“Mrs. Cassiday is one of the reasons I am an educator,” wrote Cheyanne Mappes. “While in high school I was really struggling with some family issues. She helped guide and support me through them. Her compassion and love for her students resonated with me and helped guide my career choice. Often in my teaching, I think back to Mrs. Cassiday and make decisions based on how I think she would.”
“I taught English for 17 years, and I now teach theatre arts classes all day,” Link Stolzfus wrote. “The skills she planted and nurtured in me in writing and analysis, as well as performance, have touched today’s students hundreds of miles away in Goshen, Indiana.
“Rest in peace, Mrs. Cassiday, and thank you. From my heart, thank you.”
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A third former Brown County teacher also died in April, in Wayne County in northern Indiana, where she had been living.
Catherine Galloway taught fourth at Helmsburg Elementary School for 38 years. She passed away April 3 at the age of 84.
“I loved Mrs. Galloway,” wrote Amber Baker on a remembrance post. “(She was) one of those teachers you will never be able to forget.”
Former student Diana McDonald Biddle remembered Galloway as one of the many “strong women who guided and nurtured me as a young person and made me/us the strong women we are today.”
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This Friday, the Parent-Teacher Organization Council will host a concert to honor retiring and retired Brown County teachers and staff. This show is especially dedicated to Coral Hamlin, Brown County Junior High School librarian; Ed Santos, president of the partnership committee for Brown County Intermediate School; Carol Walker, elementary principal and superintendent at Brown County Schools; and Janice Cassiday, Brown County High School English and drama teacher; all have died in the past six months.
The concert will start at 5 p.m. Friday, May 3 at the Brown County High School auditorium. It is free and open to the public, but donations are welcome.
A dinner donated by local businesses will start at 4 p.m. in the high school cafeteria; this year, the public is also welcome to partake along with teachers and their families. Local businesses also have donated gift certificates as raffle awards for teachers and staff.
With questions, contact Clara Stanley, concert coordinator, at [email protected] or 312-310-3617.
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