MARY WOODWARD

Mary Connell

Woodward

Mary Connell Woodward died on June 18, 2010, at her residence at Kendal at Longwood where she had lived since 1984. She was 94 years old.

Born August 3, 1915 in Covington, KY, she was a lifelong resident of West Chester and Chester County. She was the daughter of William F. and Mary Meyer Connell.

She grew up in West Chester and was a 1933 graduate of West Chester High School. Receiving her undergraduate degree in elementary education in 1937 from West Chester State Teachers' College [now West Chester University], she later went on to do graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Maine.

She began her teaching career in 1937 at a rural one-room school in Compass, PA where she taught all eight grades. Most of her students there were drawn from the local Amish community. The school schedule followed the farming season with gaps during the year while the students worked during planting and harvesting. In addition to her students, regular classroom visitors included sheep, goats, dogs, and the occasional calf, colt or mule. She then moved to the two-room school in Elverson, PA where she taught grades one through three.

During World War II she taught in the Ridley Township, Delaware County public schools. Most of her students were the children of war workers from Appalachia brought to the shipyards on the Delaware River. Many of those children had never been to school before and she felt working with them was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of her teaching career.

In 1954 she began teaching at Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, DE. She taught there for twenty-five years until her retirement in 1979. In her early years at Friends she taught fifth grade, and then moved to teaching middle school math and social studies. While at Friends she served on numerous faculty committees, including search committees for headmaster. In the summer of 1965 and in later summers, during the early stages of the federal War on Poverty, she taught in Chester County's Project Head Start program in New Garden and West Chester. While with Head Start she saw the harsh realities of rural poverty of a sort that she had not seen since growing up in the Great Depression. She was firm in her commitment to racial and social equality, and saw education as a means to foster that equality.

She was a member of Birmingham Friends Meeting for over seventy years, serving for many years on its religious education committee and teaching First Day School. She was also a member of the Birmingham Forum and the New Century Club of West Chester.

She is survived by two sons, Roland H. Woodward and his wife Faith, and Stephen B. Woodward and his wife Ann B. Brown, all of West Chester. Also surviving are her granddaughters: Rebecca Woodward Tabbutt, her husband Joe Tabbutt, and their daughter Anna Hope Tabbutt, all of Parkesburg; Hannah C. Woodward of New York City; Sarah M. Woodward of West Chester; and her step-granddaughter Laura K. Woolford of West Chester. She is also survived by her very close friends Randy and Barbara Davis Bovbjerg, and their sons Chris and Matt, all of Washington, DC, as well as by several nieces, nephews, and cousins. She was predeceased by her former husband Roland McCullough Woodward, her brother John A. Connell, her sister Katherine C. Wiswesser, and her daughter-in-law Anne Spivey Woodward.

A memorial meeting for worship will be held at Birmingham Friends Meeting, 1245 Birmingham Rd., West Chester, PA on Saturday, July 17, at 11 am. Interment will be private at Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, her family suggests contributions to the Kendal at Longwood Resident Assistance Entry Fee Fund, P.O. Box 100, Kennett Square, PA 19348 or Wilmington Friends School, 101 School Rd. Wilmington, DE 19803.

Arrangements are by the DELLAVECCHIA, REILLY, SMITH & BOYD FUNERAL HOME, Inc., West Chester,

www.DellaFH.com

610-696-1181