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Descendant of William Holmes McGuffey appreciates history
By JoAnn Jones
HUBBARD
Photo
ROBERT K. YOSAY | THE VINDICATOR Shirley Eckley of Hubbard, a descendant of William Holmes McGuffey who loves to teach, holds several of the McGuffey Readers she owns.
Some people were born to be teachers.
Shirley Eckley of Hubbard, a descendant of William Holmes McGuffey, is one of them.
“I was a senior at South High School when my English teacher, Miss Simmons, noticed that I was helping a boy from Puerto Rico,” Eckley said. “She was a lovely lady, and she walked right up to me and said, ‘Have you ever thought about teaching? You really should.’”
“I really wanted to be a history teacher, but I was told that girls do not study history because men get the jobs,” she said, noting that she started studying music at Youngstown State University and then switched to English.
“I started teaching English at seventh grade [level], but then I went back to YSU, took Early Childhood, and found my niche,” Eckley said. “I was drawn to elementary; that’s where I belonged.”
Her first year was spent at Joshua Dixon School in Columbiana, then she taught at Kirkmere Elementary in Youngstown and Reed Middle and Roosevelt Elementary schools in Hubbard. She retired from teaching in the Youngstown City Schools.
“A lot of the McGuffey descendants went into teaching,” Eckley said. “William Holmes McGuffey wrote the original textbooks. When he started to compile his eclectic readers, he had a big porch, and he would gather the neighborhood children and read to them.”
Eckley’s great-great grandmother, Anna, was McGuffey’s sister. She and her husband, Nehemiah Harris, moved from Pennsylvania to Coitsville Township, Eckley said.
“Anna was one of the few women who could read,” Eckley continued. “She taught all her children to read, but she wanted more for her boys.”
Eckley said Anna talked her husband into building McGuffey Road so the boys could go on horseback to Wick Road for school.
“This is all legend, though,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s true.”
As a descendant in a family that valued education, Eckley herself influenced others with her gift of teaching.
“I began teaching a totally phonetic reading program when I first taught here,” she said. “But my husband, Tom, was in the Army and we went to Leesville, Louisiana, and oh, was that an awakening.”
“The kids there couldn’t read so I went back to basics and taught them phonics,” she continued. “God bless them, they started reading. The superintendent came in and watched and told me it was fascinating. It was an interesting, interesting year.”
“I came back and started teaching in Youngstown,” Eckley said. “I quit and had my son and then my daughter. I took five years off with my children, went back, and never left until retirement.”
After Eckley retired, she read an article in The Vindicator about a meeting of the McGuffey Historical Society.
“My mother never joined,” she said. “I don’t know why. She cut out everything [in the newspaper] about the society.”
Eckley said she joined the society and has been vice president “for a long time.” She added that Richard Scarsella, the society’s president, plays a huge role in keeping the society going.
“Richard thinks preservation is so important,” she said. “In 1964 there used to be over 100,000 members in McGuffey historical societies. Now we’re the last society. If it weren’t for us, I don’t know what would happen.
Scarsella said Eckley is very modest about beginning the Front Porch Storytellers group. In honor of McGuffey, who read his stories on his front porch, Eckley and other members of the society go out into the schools to read McGuffey stories to children.”
“As a historical society, we get invited to speak to groups,” Eckley said. “When I go, I tell stories. Adults love to be told stories, too.
She said some of the McGuffey Readers are still in print today and are used in a lot of church schools and for home-schooled children. She has several copies of different readers that people have given to her over the years.
“The readers also teach cursive underneath the printed words,” she pointed out.
Eckley said she attends Founder’s Day at McGuffey Elementary each year, where she tells the children stories.
“My mom was always really proud that the McGuffeys came from the Coitsville area,” she said. “And my dad was from Pennsylvania so we would go back to see the cemetery where the McGuffeys there were buried. He would tell me, ‘this is where your ancestors are buried.’”
Eckley said that along with history, she has another love: ministry.
“I had wanted to become a minister, too,” she said with a sigh. “But my minister said, ‘Women don’t become ministers; they marry them.’ But now, since I’ve retired, on the first and fifth Tuesdays of each month I do a worship service at Liberty Arms. I call the people there ‘my little congregation.’”
Eckley said she also keeps busy as a member of the Eastern Star Grand Chapter of Ohio, where she has just started a one-year position as the Grand Esther. This position will require her to go all over the state.
“We’re a Masonic family,” she said. “I’ve been in Eastern Star for over 50 years. I was a Rainbow Girl and then joined at 18. Tom is a Mason, and my daughter Heather is in Eastern Star. We raised $4,500 for the James Cancer Center in Columbus. When my husband got cancer, we saw how much this means when you face it personally. He’s cancer-free now.”
With all the activities Eckley has, she stays with the McGuffey Historical Society because she feels history is important.
“The contributions William Holmes McGuffey made to education are going by the wayside,” she said. “His museum at Miami [Ohio] University used to be open all the time, and it’s not now. He used to be in history books, but not now.”
“I just feel history is so important,” Eckley said. “How can you go forward if you don’t know the past?”