Talented Musician Conrad Johnson Chooses Career as a Music Educator Instead of Fame and Fortune

Many music teachers and jazz aficionados have probably heard of Conrad Johnson, Sr., a music educator from Houston, Texas. In addition to his role as a remarkable educator, Conrad was a phenomenal musician.

Conrad once played with the legendary Count Basie, and Erskine Hawkins once tried to persuade him to join his orchestra. Conrad declined the fame and fortune because he didn't want to leave his family or his give up teaching. "Conrad Johnson is one of Houston's unsung cultural heroes," says Rick Mitchell, former pop music critic for the Houston Chronicle. "He could have made a national name for himself with his two big bands. Instead he chose to devote his career to educating Houston's future musicians. He is retired from the school system, but he's still hard at work as an educator."

Born in Victoria, Texas, the young Conrad was nine years old when his family moved to the port city of Houston. After graduating from Yates High School, Conrad attended Houston College for Negroes, and then Wiley College in Marshall in eastern Texas, where he graduated in 1941. He started his career as a music educator at Kashmere High School that same year.

Conrad made a lasting contribution to music when he formed the Kashmere Stage Band, an internationally-known school orchestra that won a number of awards during its decade-long existence. His kids always called him "Prof." Under Prof's tutelage, the student musicians in the Kashmere Band won forty-two out of the forty-six competitions they entered between 1969 and 1977. They recorded eight albums featuring more than twenty original compositions by Conrad, and they went on tour throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe.

In 1978, following a thirty-seven-year career, Conrad retired from his position at Kashmere High School. In his retirement, he continued to remain active in shaping music in Houston by conducting summer programs and in-home tutoring. In 2000, the talented educator was inducted into the Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame. The Conrad O. Johnson School of Fine Arts, a magnet school at Kashmere High School, is named after him. This wonderful teacher and musician passed away in 2008 at the age of 92.

Math Teacher and Youth Mentor Sheck Exley Was Also a Pioneer Scuba Diver

Sheck Exley was a teacher of advanced algebra and calculus at Suwanee High School in Live Oak, Florida. The man is better-known, however, for his pioneering work as a cave diver. He broke numerous world records in the sport, and was also a successful author on the subject. He published Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival (1986) and Caverns Measureless to Man (2009), whose title was inspired by a phrase from the poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

This naturally-talented educator spent years training advanced divers, and those experiences fueled his passion for teaching. A popular teacher, he even posted his home number on the bulletin board and told his students they could call him day or night if they had trouble with their math homework. Before long, the kids were calling him with troubles that had nothing to do with differential equations. Over time Sheck became a mentor to adolescent boys who had brushes with the law or were on the verge of dropping out of school. One by one, he pulled them into the local karate club he founded, teaching them how to avoid trouble through physical and mental discipline, to take control of their lives, and to make better decisions.

Sadly, Sheck's own life story does not have a happy ending. He died while attempting to set a new world depth record in a cenote, or sinkhole, known as El Zacaton in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on April 6, 1994. He was only 45.

Union Organizer "Mother" Jones: A Remarkable Chalkboard Champion

One amazing chalkboard champion was teacher, dressmaker, and union organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones. This remarkable woman was born in 1837 in Cork City, County Cork, Ireland, the daughter of impoverished tenant farmers. She was just a teenager when her family immigrated to Canada to escape the Irish Potato Famine. Her family later moved to the United States.

All her life, Mary was passionate about the welfare of children and the underprivileged. Following her graduation from normal school at age seventeen, she became a schoolteacher, first at a convent in Monroe, Michigan, and later in Memphis, Tennessee. It was in Memphis that she met and married George E. Jones, an iron molder and union member. Tragically, the young schoolteacher lost her husband and all four of their children, all under the age of five, in the yellow fever epidemic of 1867. Next, Mary relocated to Chicago and established a dressmaking shop. Unfortunately, the workshop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Following the demise of her business, Mary began working as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers Union. She helped coordinate several major strikes, and she also co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Because she referred to the union members as "her boys," Mary was often referred to as "Mother" Jones. Mary gained fame for mobilizing the wives of striking coal miners to march with brooms and mops in an effort to block strikebreakers from crossing the picket lines.  In 1902, one American district attorney called her "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners.

In 1903, Mary was greatly disturbed by the inadequate enforcement of child labor laws in mines and silk mills in Pennsylvania, so she organized one hundred youngsters in a Children's March from Kensington, Philadelphia, to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay, New York. In the procession, the children carried banners that proclaimed, "We want to go to school, and not the mines!"

Mary Harris Jones died in Adelphi, New York, on November 30, 1930, at the age of 93. She was buried in Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones Elementary School in Adelphi was named in her honor. This amazing former schoolteacher will always be remembered as a chalkboard champion.

Chalkboard Champion Joseph E. Miro Elected to the Delaware State Legislature

It should be no surprise that very often remarkable educators branch out into other spheres of endeavor. Such is the case with veteran teacher Joseph E.  Miro.

Joseph Miro was born on July 15, 1946, in Matanzas, Cuba. He graduated in 1970 from Lincoln University, and immediately accepted a position in the Wilmington School District in Wilmington, Delaware. Later he transferred to the Christina School District, also in Wilmington. He completed his master's degree at West Chester University in 1975. After a thirty year career, Joseph retired from the teaching profession in 2001.

Multitalented, Joseph was elected in 1998 to represent the 22nd District in the Delaware State House of Representatives, where he still serves. The Cuban American is a member of the legislative committees for education, appropriations, health and human development, and joint finance.

Kathleen Bonanno: The Poet and Chalkboard Champion

Sometimes our students (and their parents) forget that teachers are real people. We live, we laugh, we love, and we suffer, just like any other human being. Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno is a remarkable teacher who reminds the entire community that teachers live the full range of human experiences.

Kathleen Bonanno was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. She attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where she earned her bachelor's degree in English and her master’s degree in education. She taught at Dobbins High School in North Philadelphia for five years and Cheltenham High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, for the past seventeen years.

Like many educators, Kathleen is multi-talented. She is the author of an award-winning book of poetry entitled Slamming Open the Door ((2009), a volume which Library Journal described as "a stunning first book." Kathleen wrote the collection of poems following the gut-wrenching murder of her daughter, Leidy Bonanno, an abandoned child from Chile Kathleen and her husband adopted. Leidy was strangled in 2003 by a former boyfriend, just after her graduation from nursing school. The loss inspired Kathleen to become an advocate for victims’ rights and a member of the Montgomery Country Parents of Murdered Children. For her efforts, this amazing teacher and author was honored with a Women of Courage,Women of Inspiration Purple Ribbon Award from the Lutheran Settlement House in Philadelphia in 2008.

Teacher Margaret Clark Formby: The Champion of the Texas Cowgirl

Not many teachers can say they were also cowgirls, but one who can is Texas native Margaret Clark Formby. Margaret Formby was born in 1929 in Van Horn, Texas, near El Paso, the daughter of ranchers. She graduated from Van Horn High School in 1946, the salutatorian of her class. She went on to college at Texas Tech, earning her bachelor's degree in English and speech in 1950. Upon her graduation, she worked as a teacher at Hereford High School, before relocating to Fort Worth.

Growing up in a western environment, Margaret fought to have women recognized for their many contributions to western culture. She founded the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Hereford, Deaf Smith County, in the basement of the public library. The museum was later moved to Fort Worth. Margaret also worked as the editor for the Cowgirl Hall of Fame magazine, Sidesaddle.

In addition to her cultural preservation efforts, Margaret labored tirelessly on behalf of young people. She was one of two women in the state who was named to a commission to investigate child pornography, and she also served on the Texas House Speaker's committee to research teen pregnancy.

Margaret earned many honors for her work. In 2000, her name was added  to the list of "100 That Made a Difference: History Makers of the High Plains" by the Amarillo Globe News.  She also received the Pioneer Woman Award from the American Cowboy Culture Society.

Margaret Formby passed away in 2003 at the age of 73. She will forever be remembered as a teacher who worked to preserve an important part of our western heritage.

The Original "Betty Crocker" Was an English Teacher

Betty Crocker was an icon of American housewifery in the 1950s, but did you know her image was actually that of Adelaide Hawley Cumming, an English teacher? This remarkable educator portrayed the fictional Betty Crocker on television in a half-hour show called The Betty Crocker Show, and she also starred in walk-on commercials on the Burns & Allen Show, where comedian George Burns would say to his wife, "I don't know how to bake a cake, Gracie, but here is Betty Crocker to show us how."

Adelaide was born in 1905 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A vaudeville performer and broadcast pioneer, Adelaide majored in piano and voice at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, New York. Following her graduation from college, she taught music for two and a half years at the Alabama College School of Music in Montevallo, Alabama. From 1937 to 1950 she was the host of the Adelaide Hawley Program, first on NBC radio and then on CBS. At the height of her career, Adelaide was a nationally recognized figure, second only to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. According to Adelaide's daughter, Marcia Hayes, the teacher/actress was a feminist in her private life, and was not especially fond of cooking. "I am merely the manifestation of a corporate image," she once told autograph-seeking fans. She practiced her autograph as Betty Crocker by copying the signature from the top of the cake mix box.

When General Mills replaced her with a more updated image in 1964, Adelaide went back to school, earning a doctorate in speech education from New York University in 1967. She taught English to second-language learners in Washington state until her death at age 93 in 1998, a career as an educator that spanned nearly thirty years.