1964 Award Winners

Biographies below were included in the program for the year listed here and were current as of that time.

Dan Foster

Principal and Teacher

LaCrosse Elementary Principal

USD 395 LaCrosse

Dan Foster, grade school principal and teacher at La Crosse, is from a large family where education looms large. Mrs. Foster teaches kindergarten at La Crosse, and their daughter taught after college graduation. Their son, who is working toward an engineering degree at Kansas State, is currently in the United States Army. The Fosters believe that education comes from travel as well as from books. They have traveled widely in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Two years ago they spent ten weeks on a tour of Europe.

Mr. Foster holds the Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Fort Hays State College. He began his teaching career in a rural school in Ness County. Later he was an elementary principal at Ness City for six years; for nearly a quarter of a century he has been a part of the La Crosse school system. During these years he has been active in local, state, and professional organizations, and has served as vice-president of the Hays section of the Kansas State Teachers Association.

Mr. Foster has been active in community work, and has served scouting with distinction. A scout master at La Crosse for twelve years, he had the satisfaction of seeing eighteen of his boys attain the Eagle rank and seventeen achieved their church award. Three times he attended the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, once the National Jamboree in California, and once the Jamboree at Valley Forge. A few years ago the Kanza Council presented him the Silver Beaver Award.

Mary Hunholz

Second Grade Teacher

USD 383 Manhattan-Ogden

Mrs. Mary Hunholz has taught thirty-six consecutive years in the elementary schools of Kansas. She is now in her nineteenth year of teaching at Manhattan, and previously taught seventeen years at Wamego. She has always taught the second grade.

In 1959 she received her Bachelor of Science degree from Kansas State University, Manhattan, after attending summer sessions at Kansas State Teachers College at Emporia, George Peabody Teachers College in Nashville, Tennessee, and Kansas State University in Manhattan. She will receive her Master of Science degree at Kansas State University on May 31, 1964. During the summers when she did not attend school, she traveled widely in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Two of the tours were under the direction of the National Education Association.

Professionally, Mrs. Hunholz has served in the Pottawatomie County Teachers Association and the Manhattan City Teachers Association. In 1954 she was sent by the Manhattan City Teachers Association as a delegate to the National Education Association Convention in New York City. During the school year of 1954 and 1955 she served as president of the local association in Manhattan. She is a Life Member of NEA and a member of the Kansas State Teachers Association. In 1961 the Sectional Delegate Assembly elected her as a classroom teacher member of the Kansas State Teachers Association Board of Directors.

Mrs. Hunholz has served her community through the church, school, professional organizations and through the honorary professional sorority of Delta Kappa Gamma.

Erdman Johnson

Vocal Music Teacher

Turner High School

USD 202 Turner

Erdman Johnson, the son of a Baptist minister, lead the nomadic life of a minister's son during his elementary school days. His elementary schooling was done in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Dakota. His high school days were spent at Pratt and Wellsville. He took the Bachelor of Arts at Ottawa University in 1933 and the Master of Music Education at Northwestern University in 1947. He has also attended the University of Kansas City and the University of Kansas.

From 1934 to 1939 Mr. Johnson taught music and Spanish at Wellsville. Since 1939 he has been at Turner, where he first taught Spanish and music in the high school. As the Turner High School grew, his teaching was first confined to music and now for the past several years exclusively to vocal music. His colleagues say that the greatest tribute to Mr. Johnson's teaching is the fact that about 30 per cent of the Turner enrollment choose vocal music as an elective from their study hour.

Soon after graduation from Ottawa University, Mr. Johnson was married. The Johnsons have two sons. One is now serving an internship in a Kansas City hospital and the other is a student at the University of Kansas.

Loma R. Mack

Seventh and Eighth Grade Teacher

Madison Jr-Sr High School

USD 386 Madison-Virgil

A native of Kansas, Mrs. Loma R. Mack has had all her schooling in Kansas. After her graduation from the Baxter Springs High School in 1933, she entered Kansas State College, Pittsburg, where she later took the Bachelor of Science degree in Education and still later the Master's degree. She has done additional work at Kansas State Teachers College, Emporia. Mrs. Mack began her teaching career in her home town of Baxter Springs, where she taught the third grade. Later, she was an elementary teacher and principal at Mineral. Since 1959 she has taught the seventh and eighth grades at Madison.

Mrs. Mack is a member of many professional, religious, and civic organizations, including the Kansas State Teachers Association, the National Education Association, Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Alpha Chi Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, Parent Teachers Association, Madison Civic Culture Club, and International Reading Association. In 1963 she was granted an honorary scholarship from the local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma to do college work during a summer session.

Mrs. Mack's colleagues testify to the active part she has taken in both community and professional groups. She is active in the Presbyterian Church, sponsors the Junior Kayettes, has served on textbook committees and curriculum councils. Her husband died in 1941 leaving her two young sons to bring up. The older son, Robert, is presently a sophomore at Kansas State University; the younger, James, is a freshman at Kansas State Teachers College.

Bernadine Sitts

English and Latin Teacher

Garden City High School

USD 457 Garden City

Since 1948 Bernadine Sitts has been a teacher of English and Latin in the Garden. City High School. Before going to Garden City she taught a rural school near McPherson and then for ten years in the high school at Lincoln. She holds both the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Science in Education from Emporia State Teachers College, the Master's degree from Columbia University, and has studied at the American Academy in Rome. She has been the recipient of many honors. She had a Fulbright Fellowship for a year's study in Rome, Delta Kappa Gamma for study at Columbia University, and was one of twenty-five selected nationally for scholarships to study at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Miss Sitts has been co-chairman of a National Education Association committee, a delegate to Zone Schools of the Kansas State Teachers Association, and responsible for programs at KST A state meetings. She has been a delegate to NEA conventions, representing both the state association and her local association. She has written for The Kansas Teacher and other educational publications and has spoken before numerous county institutes as well as before professional associations.

Miss Sitts has long been active in the American Association of University Women, and a leader in the Methodist church, where she has directed plays, youth nights, radio broadcasts and other projects of that nature.

Lillie Studt

Teacher

Kansas State School for the Blind

After devoting the last thirty-three years of her life to the welfare of the blind, Miss Lillie Elisabeth Studt is retiring this year from a life of serving the children of Kansas. Miss Studt began her work with the Kansas State School for the Blind in 1931, after having taught for fifteen years in Cloud and Ottawa counties.

Miss Studt is known among her colleagues as a teacher who may be found in her classroom from one to two hours after regular hours, helping students in braille, phonics, and reading. On Saturdays she often takes her children for a walk or reads to them; and each Sunday, for years, she has taken a group of her children to Sunday school and church. On home-going weekends, she voluntarily cares for blind children who have to travel by bus or train and often acts as a guide on shopping trips and to symphony concerts.

Miss Studt attended Fort Hays State College in the summer of 1924, the Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia for three years during the Great Depression, and finished requirements for the Bachelor of Science in Education at Kansas State Teachers College by attending summer sessions. After graduating she took further work at Michigan State University and San Francisco State College during summer sessions. She is a member of the Lutheran Church, the Kansas State Teachers Association, and several professional organizations specifically concerned with her specialized work. Among these are the American Association of Instruction for the Blind, National Education Association Council for Exceptional Children, and Teachers Association of Kansas Schools for the Blind.

Dewey E. Wolgast

Educator

USD 364 Marysville

Dewey E . Wolgast, who will be retiring in August, 1954, after forty-two years of school service in the Marysville Public Schools, is a native Kansan, born in Alta Vista in 1898. He attended both grade and high schools in Alta Vista, where he was a good student and an outstanding athlete.

Upon his graduation from high school, he taught two years in a rural school of Wabaunsee County. He attended Ottawa University during his freshman and sophomore years, Kansas State University his junior year, then again Ottawa to complete his degree. During his three years at Ottawa, he earned twelve athletic letters. From 1918 to 1919 he took time out from school work to serve in the armed forces during World War I.

For more than forty years, Mr. Wolgast has been a life member of the National Education Association and under his leadership, the Marysville public schools have a record of twenty-six years of consecutive 100 per cent membership in local, state, and national educational associations. Mr. Wolgast has served as vice-president of the Topeka-Manhattan section of the Kansas State Teachers Association, and for eighteen years he was a member of the board of control of the Kansas State High School Activities Association. His services in the last organization brought him national recognition from the National Association of Athletics for his significant contributions to the youth of the state and nation. His memberships in organizations of a professional, religious, and civic nature include the Presbyterian church, the American Legion, Rotary International, the Kansas Educators Club, and Masonic Lodge and Shrine.