Appreciation: Volusia teacher Virginia Allen remembered for her compassion and kindness

When people ask me how I went from a poor kid in a rundown trailer park in Oak Hill, Florida to a Pulitzer Prize finalist who works at Harvard, I tell them a story that always includes my sixth-grade teacher, Virginia Allen.

Mrs. Allen was a quiet, unassuming woman who seemed to genuinely care about all the children in my class at W.F. Burns-Oak Hill Elementary School in 1985 and 1986. For me, though, she was a lifeline, a continual source of encouragement and kindness at a time when I was struggling with serious personal problems.

I remember her taking me aside for pep talks, and telling me how smart she thought I was ― conversations I never had with teachers before her or since. No one in my family tried to build me up like that. In fact, by the time I entered Mrs. Allen’s class at age 11, I had endured years of abuse and neglect at home.

I learned recently that Mrs. Allen passed away Oct. 7 at age 79. Her family will host a Celebration of Life ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 4 at 10 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of Oak Hill.

Before I began writing this essay to honor Mrs. Allen, I knew very little about her. But over the past several days, through interviews with her daughters, friends and other former students, I learned that her compassion stretched across various aspects of her life.

She helped people of all ages, said Dana Greatrex, one of Mrs. Allen’s closest friends. They grew up together in tiny Oak Hill, the daughters of citrus farmers. Both became teachers. although at different Volusia County public schools.

They also raised their children together in Oak Hill ― Greatrex had two sons and Mrs. Allen had two daughters ― and worshipped together at the same church for decades.

“If she knew there was someone in need, she would come to the ladies in the church and ask, ‘How can we help this family?’” Greatrex told me. “She was always super aware of the need to respond. She would find other people to help with meeting those needs.”

I asked several of my former classmates what they remembered about Mrs. Allen. Marvel Lynn Hocquard responded within minutes.

“She was one of the sweetest teachers I ever had,” Hocquard wrote to me from Indiana. “She was always loving and very nice to me.”

Childhood in Oak Hill

Mrs. Allen was born into one of Oak Hill’s founding families in March 1944, the daughter of Thaddeus James and Ruby Mae Montgomery. She attended Oak Hill Elementary when it was a one-room wooden schoolhouse, noted her youngest daughter, Courtney Allen.

Greatrex said her favorite memory of Mrs. Allen is sitting with her as children on the front porch of her aunt’s or her Sunday school teacher’s house learning Bible verses together.

Greatrex’s cousin taught Mrs. Allen to play the piano. Then Greatrex wanted to learn, too.

“I always looked up to her,” she said. “She took piano lessons, so I took piano lessons.”

It wasn’t long before Mrs. Allen was playing piano during worship and Greatrex played for Sunday school classes.

Mrs. Allen decided in high school that she wanted to teach and became the first in her family of citrus growers and beekeepers to go to college. She saw education as “the doorway to opportunity and equality,” Courtney Allen wrote to me from Colorado.

“I think the connection is the focus on growth,” Courtney Allen wrote. “[Her family members] worked the land and she was going to help people grow.”

Her legacy

Mrs. Allen attended Berry College in Georgia. After she graduated, she met and married John A. Allen in 1967. John Allen would later become a city commissioner in Oak Hill, home to 1,986 people as of the 2020 U.S. census.

Mrs. Allen taught a total of 42 years, 36 of them at Burns-Oak Hill Elementary. Over the years, administrators asked her about going into administration, but she didn’t want to leave her community.

“My [mom] loved the comradery of teaching at Oak Hill and the direct connection to the community,” her oldest daughter, Jennifer Allen Sorese, wrote to me. “She would so often spend her evening making parent phone calls. She never really gave up on anyone no matter how trying. She knew they would grow up into a member of the community.”

Jon Dean, who went to school with me at Burns-Oak Hill Elementary in the 1980s, called Mrs. Allen “just a classy lady.” He recalled how she had protected him at school after his mother came out as a lesbian.

“She never allowed others to make fun of myself or my brother and made us feel accepted even when others did not,” Dean wrote to me in a Facebook message.

Mrs. Allen retired in 2008, the same year that Burns-Oak Hill Elementary closed. Three years later, though, it reopened as Burns Science & Technology Charter School. Mrs. Allen’s granddaughter, Isabelle Sorese, is a fifth grader there this year.

It's no coincidence that both of Mrs. Allen’s daughters are educators. Sorese is a former art teacher at Atlantic High School and the former owner of a pottery studio called Studio Bleu in New Smyrna Beach. Courtney Allen is a professor of counselor education at Adams State University in Colorado.

I’m not a teacher, but I’ve been an education journalist for more than two decades and serve on the board of directors for the Education Writers Association. Although Mrs. Allen didn’t influence my career choice, I do mention her quite a bit.

I mention her when I mentor journalists who’ve just started covering the education beat. I stress to them that good teachers really can change the lives of their students and that schools can be a refuge for children suffering abuse or trauma.

I’ve mentioned Mrs. Allen in speeches and talks I’ve given at Harvard and other parts of the country about my life’s path or career trajectory. I included her in an essay I wrote that became required reading for a course in higher education leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

I’m so grateful for Mrs. Allen. I hope she understood the impact of her work and how far her legacy reaches.

Denise-Marie Ordway grew up in Oak Hill and is currently managing editor of The Journalist’s Resource at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Appreciation: Volusia teacher Virginia Allen was 'just a classy lady'