Monroe-Lamar-Dekalb County GaArchives News.....Miss Lizzie Is Retiring After Teaching 63 Years ?
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Elaine Turk Nell http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00017.html#0004116 October 27, 2005, 3:58 pm

Clipping From An Unknown Newspaper, Undated ?
Now 81, Decatur Veteran Has Seated 10,000 Children, All of Them Good, in Her
     Classes

by Doris Lockerman
 
     Miss Lizzie Lasseter is settling down.
     She is 81, and she has stood in classrooms teaching for 63 years, and her 
feet are giving her trouble.  The clatter of a quarter-century of typing in 
her class in commerce has dimmed her ears a little.  And it is time, she 
thinks, to turn the children over the someone else.
     Miss Lizzie has been at Decatur Girls' High School for 23 years.  When 
she retires Saturday, she will wear the only orchid she has ever had in her 
life--the gift of her girl pupils, preserved in her refrigerator from last 
Sunday's baccalaureat [sic] services.
     Miss Lizzie will not go gladly.  She wishes she could teach as long as 
she lives.  "The doctor says my heart will last me a hundred years," she 
smiled, "but I guess I won't need it that long."

Over Retirement Age
     And, there is, of course, the matter of the retirement plan adopted by 
the Georgia Education Association, which will go into effect next autumn.  
According to its rules, teachers may retire at 60, and they must accept 
retirement at 65.  Miss Lizzie is already 16 years up on them.
     Miss Lizzie is little and grandmotherly.  She is the kind who wears 
dresses of dotted swiss and navy blue voile, and her feet are as comfortable 
as they can be in plain black oxfords.  Her white hair froths in wispy curls 
over her ears, straining at the tight little knot at the back of her neck.  
She has glasses, of course.  Her mouth is plain-colored.  It is the kind of 
mouth that grows wide with frequent laughter, tender with sympathy and they 
say it can be stern with disapproval.
     Not that Miss Lizzie disapproves much.  Children, to her, are just as 
good these days as they were back in the old Cheves school in Monroe County, 
where she started teaching before she was 17.  She's taught 10,000 of them 
since then, and they were all good children.
     "It's a funny thing," she mused, "I've never had any trouble at all with 
boys and girls.  They used to make me switch them a little in the old days, 
but I never liked it.  And they say you can tell a child by the home he comes 
from.  I don't believe that.  Some of my best youngsters came from pretty bad 
homes and they were mighty neglected.

Criticizes Careless Mothers
     "I do object to these working mothers letting their children run here, 
there and yonder," and her placid eyes grew angry.  "They ought to put their 
youngsters some place for care, or they ought not to work."
     No, sir, children to Miss Lizzie haven't changed much, for good or bad, 
since she can remember.  She doesn't like the way girls smear on lipstick, and 
she thinks they'd look prettier if their shoes were a mite cleaner, and they 
do seem to grow up a little too soon.
     "But I do draw the line on one thing," she said bouncing her white head 
with decision, "they don't come in my class with those head rags on!  I tell 
them to get right on out and come back with their hair combed, like sweet 
girls ought to."
     Miss Lizzie has never made big money.  She began at $30 a month, and now 
works on a part-time salary of about $60 a month.  She is not modern, unless 
you consider the way she doesn't judge the present by the eighties, is 
modern.  She doesn't drive a car (nobody 80 years old has any business driving 
a machine), nor does she yearn to fly in an airplaine or pilot a jeep.  She 
lives with Mrs. Helen Harris, a friend on Ponce de Leon Place, and spends her 
time visiting sick friends or devotedly serving the First Methodist Church in 
Decatur, her place of worship.
  
Attended Female College
     She has taught almost every garde [sic; should be grade] and every 
subject in the 63 years since she carried off a B. A. degree from Monroe 
Female College, now Bessie Tift.  The great-grandchildren of her early 
students in Opelika, Ala.; Statesboro, Ga.; Warrenton, Ga., and many other 
schools now sit in classrooms there.  She is always running into their 
grandmothers and remembering with them the days when they were children.
     And though they say she is retiring, Miss Lizzie is not through 
teaching.  She is going to live with her nephew, C. G. Lassiter, of Forsyth, 
near the place of her birth.  Her nephew is superintendent of the Trio Cotton 
Mills, and Miss Lizzie sees her work clearly cut out for her.
     She is going to help those bright little mill children learn their 
lessons.

Additional Comments:
While there is no date on this article anywhere, it is clearly an old one, as 
evidenced by its worn, yellow appearance.  On the top of the article is 
written, "She taught at Ramah School Lamar Co.
Boarded with the J. T. Means family-"

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