I’ve been asked to tell you a little about my dear friend and colleague Pat Shelley. First, I would like to introduce Pat’s father, Bill Shelley from New Castle, and his friend Beverly Baker. Pat’s brother Mike and his family are in Missouri right now on a family fishing trip. Mr. Shelley delayed his trip just to be with us this evening, and is flying out tomorrow to join them. We have all kind of adopted him into our family, too, and are so glad he is able to share this time with us. Then, since Pat very truly had two families, I would like to recognize almost the entire Alquina staff present here tonight. I think you have to have taught in a building as small as ours to really understand how close we all feel to each other - many of us have worked side by side for 20 years and more. Pat was part of our Alquina family for 25 years - and her presence is still greatly missed.

 

Pat Shelley was a dedicated and outstanding teacher at Alquina Elementary School for her entire 25 year career. She put in long hours, striving to do everything in her power to help her students achieve. She was always the first to arrive, around 7 A.M. each day - and if on rare occasion one of us did beat her to school it was a topic of conversation all day. She was also usually the last to leave, and she never left empty-handed. Her familiar black briefcase was always full of papers to carefully grade and record, and books to prepare lessons. Pam Krepp, who knew her as a colleague, friend, and parent - Miss Shelley taught all three of her sons - noted that Pat even wanted her satchel to do work when she was in intensive care.

 

Pat and I did a lot of traveling around together - and even in the car our conversation often revolved around school. Her students were so very important to her, and she was always thinking about ways she could improve instruction. As Mark George put it though, Pat was never one to toot her own horn - she often did special activities with her classroom but never called anyone’s attention to what she was doing. She had involved her students in an internet email project - the last four years with the same teacher in England. That teacher wrote to me that though she had never met Pat personally she knew from their correspondence that Pat’s devotion to her students and her career had to be an inspiration to us all. In fact, they were hoping to meet soon - Pat had applied for a passport and was in the beginning stages of planning a trip to England to meet her pen pal friend.

 

Ginny Schultz did such a good job of describing Pat’s classroom: quiet, orderly, purposeful, and engaged. Ginny also noted that Pat had spent a lot of her own money on classroom materials, and she gave up her own time at recesses and after school to provide children with extra help. Whether she was helping children make salt and flour maps, creating life-size human body outlines, or dressing up as ‘Viola Swamp’ from one of her favorite books, Pat was always trying to help her students share her own love of books and learning. And Judy Kaiser wrote that wonderful, skilled, and happy learning took place every day in Miss Shelley’s class. Katie Allen, both a colleague and parent, said that when her son was a 3rd grader he would enter the door every day and announce, “Guess what I learned today!”

 

And I love the story Claudia Holmlund shared. Claudia knew Pat as a colleague, and again had three children who passed through Miss Shelley’s classroom. She said that one of Pat’s former students told her that “I missed a lot of recesses in Miss Shelley’s room - but I sure know my multiplication facts!” We could have asked any number of former students to write a letter for Pat’s nomination, and the one we called on was Matt Lake. Matt is now a sophomore at CHS, carrying a 4.0 grade point average. He gives Miss Shelley much credit for the educational success he has achieved. He wrote that she not only was helpful and concerned in the classroom, but that she always tried to go to at least one ballgame to watch her students play. She was showing them that she cared about them away from the classroom, too.

 

Now I know I’ve talked about her until it seems that there were no flaws but Pat was as human as the rest of us. She was just so totally organized her files were works of art, and her cupboards - well, it made the rest of us seem very disorganized. But along with that organization sometimes came a little less than total acceptance of imperfections in others. She totally accepted flaws in children - but adults were supposed to have more sense. Oh - we all loved Pat. But we also knew that she valued her privacy, and didn’t really appreciate being asked to change her routine for someone else’s convenience. She was always willing to try new methodology when it was introduced, and she always had things turned in on time - but she also let us know if she thought the methodology was no better and if there seemed no earthly reason for some of the things she turned in. If something came up that we knew she wouldn’t like, we all felt like drawing straws to see who had to be the one to tell her. She had high expectations of her students, and pretty high expectations of her friends as well. However, she so consistently modeled those high expectations herself that

the rest of us just tried to live up to her vision. Pat was a very private person. I think I taught with her for a good two years before we ever actually had a conversation, and in a school the size of Alquina that is not easy. It just took awhile for anyone to get to know Pat beyond the totally professional educator.

 

Those of us who were fortunate enough to know Pat away from her classroom got to see a fun-loving friend with a great sense of humor - and an amazing mental store of trivia. Pam was Pat’s movie buddy. The rest of us just waited for their reviews to decide if a film was worth seeing. She loved sports, and attended many a Reds game with Mark and his family. Peyton Manning was a big favorite, and she was so proud of the football she had with his autograph. And she and I - well, we literally changed from rock and roll babies to country music crazy almost overnight. I remember how at a concert last summer at Adelphia Coliseum where the Titans play, I looked over to see Pat picking grass. Why? She was putting it into a plastic bag to give to everyone - so they could all have something that Peyton Manning had walked on. And then we started thinking about possible headlines - Two Connersville Teachers Caught with Bags of Grass. Pat and I went to countless concerts together, often driving up to three hours one-way for just an evening show. Carolyn Schonfeld, Jane Halcomb, Mary Beneker, and I are going back to Nashville, Tennessee, this summer on a trip Pat was so looking forward to. We’ve all agreed she’ll be right there with us listening to that great country sound.

 

Pat once told Mary Beneker that she made a vow as a very young girl to be the best teacher she could possibly be. We believe she kept true to that vow every day of her career. Teaching was not just a job for Pat - teaching was her life. There’s song we all love by Pat’s favorite artist, Ty Herndon. The opening line sums up our feelings pretty well: “In a world where love is found and lost so easily, I’m thankful I could share my life with you.” We are thankful to have had the opportunity to share a part of our lives with her.

 

It is with deep emotion that I recognize Miss Pat Shelley as she is inducted into. the Fayette County School Corporation’s Hall of Fame. She would be very proud of this honor.