Faces of Southeast Missouri: Gerald "Jerry" Richards

Gerald “Jerry” Richards says when he walks into Schnucks, there’s hardly a time he doesn’t have a former student stop him to talk. He considers it one of the greatest privileges of working in education for 54 and a half years.

“My best memories are during those years that I was a classroom teacher. As a classroom teacher, you got to know your students,” Richards says. “Those ‘children’ are now 69. But it’s always good to see them again.”

Richards started his education career at Fox High School in Arnold, Mo., where he taught history for two years before continuing his career at Cape Central Junior High School in 1967, where he worked as a mathematics teacher, counselor, assistant principal and principal for the next 35 years.

After retiring from full-time work, Richards worked in central administration for the Cape Central School District as personnel director, grant writer and federal programs coordinator. Throughout their careers, Richards and his late wife Dee, who taught first grade for 33 years at Scott City School, served as delegates for the Missouri State Teachers Association from 1971 until 2002.

Richards’ own education began in a one-room schoolhouse in Washington County, Mo. He walked to and from school each day from his family’s two-room log cabin that had a heating stove and icebox. They used coal oil lamps and a hand-crank phone. They drew their water from the spring using buckets.

At the age of 7, he and his family moved to Potosi, Mo., where his father worked at a grocery store and his mother worked at the shoe factory. At 14 years old, Richards started working at the grocery store to save money for college; by the time he became a college freshman, he had saved $1,000. He earned a Regent’s Scholarship to Southeast Missouri State University, which paid his tuition in full, $60 a semester.

It was there that he pursued his goal of becoming a teacher and there that he met his wife through the Baptist Student Union. Married for 50 years before she passed away, their first date included using up the rest of the time riding a tandem bicycle that Richards had rented for a date with a different girl who’d had to leave early. Dee and Richards have one son and two grandchildren.

Richards says remaining open to the unexpected is one of the things education can do for a person.

“Wherever you go, you have opportunities,” Richards says. “The good Lord puts you in places where you can have some wonderful opportunities to meet people, to interact with people, and hopefully, you’ll be a blessing to them, because they undoubtedly will be a blessing to you.”

Now retired, Richards enjoys volunteering as an election judge at the polls, which he has done since 2002. He is passionate about recruiting others to volunteer for the cause.

“God first, family second” is Richards’ life philosophy. Baptized at 8 years old thanks to a woman he called Aunt Annie who took him and his sister to church, he says following Christ’s teachings has always been important to him. At his church, he serves as a deacon, has served on “every committee imaginable,” and for 20 years, taught fifth and sixth grade Sunday school.

Once a week, he gets together with a group of men for lunch. One of the men in the group made them pins to wear on these occasions that say “R.O.M.E.O.: Retired Old Men Eating Out.” Richards wears his proudly.

He says his career in education taught him the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships that have an impact into the future.