Beryl Greenwell

Beryl Greenwell has experienced firsthand a good part of this extraordinary century.

Born in Ogden, Utah, she attended the "new Ogden High School" following the Great Depression and was a member of its first graduating class in 1938. She had loved debate and wanted to become a lawyer but went on to earn an associate's degree from Weber College just before World War II. She married a pilot with the Air Transport Command who was killed 16 months later, leaving her an expectant mother with a five-month-old child. In 1946 she married her brother's best friend, Robert Greenwell, and had six additional children. Today the children are grown and doing well, having all gone to college with half of them graduating, but they are scattered about, with only two as nearby as Jeremy Ranch and Ogden.

Some dozen years or so after remarrying, she went back to school but Robert, an engineer with GE, was transferred to Mississippi to help NASA put a man on the moon. She was in Mississippi for about ten years, during which time she taught in the Biloxi parochial school system.

Upon returning to Salt Lake City, she finally got a chance to go back to school and earn her BA in English in 1976. She then taught school at Murray High School and later at Mount Jordan and Union Middle Schools.

Soon after her retirement in 1986, Robert died, and she volunteered to teach fifth graders at the Museum of Natural History. She was trained in the sciences for a year, and then taught a new group of 5^th graders each week for three hours a day, an hour each of biology, geology, and anthropology. It was hands-on science and a wonderful experience for five years.

Her parents were active in the Presbyterian church in Ogden, and she was a Presbyterian until about eight years ago when the church got too political and her daughter talked her into trying the United Church of Christ, an arm of the Congregational church, on Mothers Day. But Irene Fryer peaked her interest in humanism, and while she is still undecided about the supernatural, she finds the humanist programs "fantastic" in how they open her mind and make her think. She believes "humanism" as a word is important for all that it implies.

So now, having survived the Great Depression, experienced tragedy in World War II, raised eight children, helped indirectly in the space program, earned her long delayed BA degree, taught in public and parochial schools, experienced widowhood a second time, and introduced hundreds of fifth graders to science, she is soaking up all the culture and friendship that life has to offer with season tickets to the Utah Symphony and Ballet West, bridge with three different groups, and golf, having been twice president of the Mick Riley Golf Association.

This has been an incredible century, and Beryl can tell you all about it.

--Earl Wunderli