D.G. Martin’s Feb. 28 column, “Could Brooklyn-NC lightning strike again?,” was about Etaf Rum’s debut novel, “A woman is no man,” which addresses “… what women could do in society.”
Columnist Martin wrote: “Its themes of conflict between a drive for individual fulfillment and the demands of community and family loyalty are universal.” A classic example is my father’s classmate, Virginia Livingston, who married Charlie Muse.
Nicknamed “Baby” due to her tiny size, Virginia was a “giant” in her profession. Mrs. Muse was our seventh-grade teacher in 1960-61. Shortly before they died, she confessed to my father that she really did not want to teach. There were so many other professions she would rather have entered, had women not been restricted, so she settled for teaching.
From our seventh-grade class alone, Mrs. Muse’s guidance and influence produced a postal worker, a business owner, a railroad executive, a real-estate agent, a real-estate broker, two doctors of education, two school principals, an assistant school superintendent, a Scotland County school superintendent, a military commander, and an author and freelance writer, as well as approximately two dozen successful blue-collar workers.
I have no way of knowing how many and how well she influenced other students during her three decades in a profession she would not have chosen had the door been open to other professions for women, but I can not help but wonder what all of we students might have accomplished, if teaching had been her first choice.
Our other teachers were fine, some were wonderful, but Virginia “Baby Livingston” Muse was our “lightning strike” of inspiration!
Thank you,
Robert C. Currie Jr.
Laurinburg