From buggy to Buick

If MSTA’s spirit were embodied in an individual, it would be Mildred Leaver — a graceful, white-haired woman with a drive to improve things and an unwavering ethic that puts children first.

By Miglena Sternadori

Mildred Leaver, age 99, has taught for most of her life. The past MSTA president still visits classrooms to share her memories of the home front during World War I.

Her voice is strong; she walks without a cane and recently convinced the state to extend her driver’s license by three more years.

What makes her happy beyond words is to meet grown-up students and hear of their successes. She realizes she had a hand in those.

“The teaching profession is the greatest ever,” she says. “We teach the doctors, the lawyers, the legislators. What they are, it’s because of our profession.”

Born and raised on a dairy farm in southwest Missouri, Mildred received her degree from Southwest Missouri State Teachers College in Springfield and taught for several years during the Great Depression before marrying Larry Leaver, a physics professor in Rolla. The Leavers had one daughter, Lari-Le, who followed her mother’s steps to become a teacher.

Mildred returned to teaching in 1948 and soon became principal of Eugene Field Elementary in Rolla.

In those postwar years when luxuries were scarce, Mildred remembers the enthusiasm at the early leadership meetings at Bunker Hill, after the association gained ownership in 1947. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bunker Hill consisted of several cabins with “bare walls” and “crude beds,” with no indoor plumbing or hot water. Guests lined up in front of a shower cabin, but nobody minded the inconvenience.

“It was such a wonderful occasion,” Mildred recalls.

Having lived and taught over many decades, Mildred learned to change and adapt. Her first date was in a horse-drawn buggy; now she drives a luxurious Buick. Things have changed in the teaching profession as well, but Mildred believes the basics remain the same.

“All of us ought to strive,” she says. “To be a good teacher, you have to be prepared and you have to love children and most importantly, love to be with them.”

Mildred faced mandatory retirement at 65, but her heart was always in school. One crisp fall morning, when schoolchildren passed by her house, she recalls thinking, “What will I do?” When an opportunity to substitute came up, Mildred took it and taught for another 25 years.

Retirement didn’t end her political career, either. As one of the leaders in the Silver-Haired Legislature and later state director for the National Retired Teachers Association, Mildred successfully lobbied in the 1970s to improve the teachers retirement system.

“It was a fun time because I got to know so many teachers in Missouri,” she recalls.

A resident of Rolla Presbyterian Manor for the past three years, Mildred hasn’t given up on improving the world. At her suggestion, seniors at the facility recently started getting together to play cards at night instead of silently heading to their rooms after dinner.

“I like for everybody to be happy,” Mildred says. “My whole effort has been to make the profession better than I found it.”