Photos will serve generations

The classroom was her life.
But wildflowers always had a special place in her heart.
Now, images of those wildflowers will find a place in future classrooms for generations to come.
Retired Jay County educator Donna Ogborn has donated a collection of more than 600 color photographic slides of Indiana wildflowers to the Friends of the Limberlost.
The slides will be scanned and digitized, then put to use in Powerpoint presentations, publications, volunteer training and educational sessions at the new Limberlost Visitors Center in Geneva.
Limberlost site director Randy Lehman said the Donna Ogborn collection will be a significant educational resource for years to come.
The photography project started well before her retirement in 1978.
“Chet and I had been doing wildflowers for a long time,” she said last week.
She and her husband, who had been a telegrapher for the Nickel Plate Railroad and later sold cars for a Ford dealership in Portland, focused their wildflower walks on Indiana’s state parks.
“I’m sure we went to every park in Indiana,” Donna said. “I continued it in retirement. … I wasn’t the best photographer.”
As a result there are duplicates of a number of wildflowers as she worked to get the best shot.
Her career in education began even before she had graduated from high school. Growing up in Buckland, Ohio, near Wapakoneta, she was a senior the winter of 1941.
Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“In 1941 when the war started, they knew they were going to be short of teachers at the end of that year,” Donna recalled.
Seniors who were interested in teaching were offered the opportunity to graduate early in March and begin taking classes at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, so they would be on a fast track to a two-year teaching degree.
“So that’s what I did,” she said. “I was 18 when I started to teach, younger than some of the seniors in the school.”
In 1946, she and Chet were married and moved to Portland because of his work for the Nickel Plate. Donna thought she’d supplement the couple’s income by doing some substitute teaching and met with county superintendent Mardy Logan and Portland superintendent D.S. Weller.
“When they found out I was a teacher, they grabbed me,” Donna said. “They needed teachers badly.”
With two years of teacher training and two years experience at a school in Cridersville, Ohio, she was a prime candidate and was quickly hired.
Over the next 35 years, she would teach and/or serve as principal at seven different Jay County schools, a record unlikely to be matched.
Her first local school was Bryant, where for two years she taught a combined fourth and fifth grade class.
She had taught fourth grade at Cridersville, so it was a good fit.
“Then I had a baby,” she said.
Her son, Steve, was born in November 1948.
“But Mardy came back to me again,” she recalled.
When Steve was 1 year old, Donna found an excellent babysitter and returned to the classroom at Bryant.
Then the rules of the game changed. The standard for teachers was raised to a four-year degree, and those who had a bachelor’s degree could “bump” teachers with an associate’s degree out of a position.
Donna was “bumped” out of the Bryant classroom and found herself moved to Gov. I.P. Gray School in New Mount Pleasant. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.
At Gray, she was teaching a combined fifth and sixth grade class with 52 students. It was long before the era of teachers’ aides.
“All I did was discipline,” Donna said. “That’s all I was able to do.”
She spoke to Logan about the situation and after a year at Gray moved to Noble Township School, a grade one through eight school east of Bellefountain. She stayed at Noble for six years, teaching third and fourth grade.
“During that time I took courses,” she recalled. “Saturday classes, evening classes, correspondence classes, summer classes, anything I could get. Until I got my degree.”
She not only earned her bachelor’s degree but went on to receive a master’s degree in administration.
From Noble, she was moved to Judge Haynes Elementary School, where she taught sixth grade for two years.
“That was really my favorite grade,” she said.
In October of 1960, Logan asked her to put her administrative degree to work as principal of Lincoln Elementary School in Portland. After about five years at Lincoln, she was moved to Garfield Elementary School on Portland’s east side, where she succeeded retiring principal Suzanne Goslee.
She would stay at the helm at Garfield about eight years before being asked to be principal at Pennville Elementary School.
“That was the first time (as principal) that I didn’t also teach,” she said.
In retirement, she focused on continuing her wildflower project and on another love, quilting. She’s made 21 hand-stitched full-size quilts, and was back in Portland last week to see old friends at the quilt show at Arts Place. For seven years, she was president of Stitch ’N’ Chatter Quilt Club, which sponsors the annual show.
Widowed since 1995, she now resides in Fort Wayne, not far from her son Steve.
Former students and colleagues can write to her at 1717 Maplecrest, No. 341, Fort Wayne, Ind. 46815.[[In-content Ad]]