It is with great sorrow that I must report the passing of our longtime member, Mary A. Hussey.
Appended below are two letters; the first, about Mary Hussey from two former students. The second is the last piece she wrote for the Cosmo Club, partly as an apology for having missed a publication deadline in the previous newsletter.- Andrea Shields, Executive Director
The following appeared in the Piatt County Journal-Republican on Wednesday, August 9, 2000.
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Mary Hussey is dead at 93; yet Mary Hussey lives. And you will ask: "Who is Mary Hussey?" Most of you won't know but you will begin to understand when we tell you that 64 years ago she taught us English, Speech, and Drama at Monticello High School. We were her Class of 1936.
She was an exceptionally fine teacher. Like so many in the teaching profession, she placed a special mark in each of her students-a mark to inspire each of us to an appreciation of learning, an awareness that each one had a capacity to learn, to appreciate great writing and poetry and to recognize the wisdom found there. She was unique. She had a keen wit, a perceptive eye and a sharp tongue-used always to challenge us to think and to give our best.
Miss Hussey lived a long and productive life, later teaching at the University of Illinois and, in retirement, continuing to tutor students. Single all of her life, she lived to have hundreds of students as her extended family. Teaching in Monticello High School was her greatest joy. To the hour of her death she could recall each of her students by name. She was always our special guest at our class reunions, including our 60th year reunion in l996.
In her classes, Mary Hussey liked to read to us from the great writers and poets. She would like it that now, in her memory, we think of the lines from William Cullen Bryant's To a Waterfowl: "Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven hath swallowed up thy form: yet, on our hearts deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, and shall not soon depart."
- For the Class of 1936, Elizabeth Hoskins Glasgow and George Alvin Lindsley
Dear Friends and Alums:
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| Mary A. Hussey, age 9 |
Here we are, almost halfway through the first year of the new millennium, which also means that we have almost finished the current semester.
This type of date specification has different meanings for different people. When I was your age and for two or three decades following, probably my contemporaries and I enjoyed TIME more and the PASSAGE of TIME less than you do now.
You are victims of the crashing, crushing frenzy to see, hear, feel, and become a part of the next situation or event, whatever it is or whether it is new, noisy, dangerous, spectacular, cruel, or even fatal. If you do not agree with this statement-and you will not-watch carefully some of the TV commercials, especially those advertising cars.
Now you are saying-or thinking-"Oh, no! The Alumni representative is giving grandmotherly advice!" No. I am not, and never was, the grandmotherly type. I have thoroughly enjoyed all my years as a student (undergraduate degree in '28 and Master's in '29 from the U of I); as a high school teacher (1929-43); as a teacher at the University (English as a Second Language); and as a participant in student organizations-all together covering a span of years extending from 1924 to the present.
From time to time, it has occurred to me that some of you might be interested in knowing something about the people who write for Cosmo Connections. At the risk of boring you inexcusably, here is a brief autobiographical sketch: I was born July 28, 1907 (the year of the establishment of the Cosmo Club at the U of I) in rural Williamsville, Sangamon County, Illinois, to an ultra-conservative mother and a country-fiddle-playing, gambling father. My one sibling, a brother six years older than I, who was a chemist and a violinist, died at the age of 42. He was a remarkably fine person, almost entirely the opposite of me. Examples of this statement: he was shy, he was brilliant in math . . . . I pause in this biographical sketch to say that at the Cosmo Club in Champaign, everything is under control.
Now comes the awful truth in answer to the question: Why was this contribution to Cosmo Connections, our club newsletter, not in the last issue of the academic year? Answer: purely the forgetfulness of old age! I just did not make the deadline. And I sincerely apologize for that.
It has been a pleasure to know and write to you. Good luck!
Mary A. Hussey