Alta Blakely

A wonderful teacher! Your legacy is all over the world Ms. Blakely.

Alta Farr Blakely was a substitute teacher in my 8th grade at Fiske Elementary school. We had managed to drive out all other substitutes, but Mrs Farr was the ultimate teacher, who stayed, and followed us (or did we follow her?) to Hyde Park High School. In freshman English, she challenged us to explain the Golden Rule instead of preaching and teaching. Was I glad the bell rang when she called on me! Such are my vivid recollections of a dedicated teacher.

Many years later, she...

Dover, IL, back in the '50's, the Farr family living in the parsonage, me playing with Rae Linda in a tub of water on a hot summer afternoon; my mother, Myrtle Hassler, waiting for and delighting in the Eckhoff family reunion at the Dover Church during summers. Pleasant memories. Alta Marie, a name and person like no other.
-Shirley Hassler Degen

'Cago Grandma, you've been wanting to be at peace for quite a while, and now you are. Here's hoping you are now in a wonderful place full of quilts, and atlases, and poems, and where everyone uses proper grammar....

A life of giving, aiding, supporting, and contributing to a better world ... Alta will be remembered fondly by so many people she touched.