LONGTIME GORDONVILLE INSTRUCTOR TO RETIRE

Bessie Buck said the chance to teach has been the fulfillment of a childhood dream.

When she retires later this month, the Gordonville School instructor will close out 24 years of that dream. Some of the things that have made her job enjoyable -- supportive parents, seeing students grow and learn, the annual graduation ceremony for third graders -- will be the things the third grade teacher will remember and miss the most during her retirement.

Most teachers begin their careers within a few short years of finishing high school. For Buck, however, the start of her career as a teacher began much later, after her three children were born and growing and 20 years after she had graduated high school.

Perhaps the reason that Buck has enjoyed her career so much these past 23 years is that she had to wait so long to get in the classroom.

Born the sixth of seven children near Johnsonville, Tenn., Buck became interested in teaching as a youngster enrolled in school at Benton. Her family had purchased a farm just south of the Scott County seat after the Tennessee Valley Authority bought their Johnsonville tract to make way for Kentucky Lake.

At Benton School, Buck's fourth grade teacher was her sister, Oneida Ziegler. Now a retired Kelly School District instructor, Ziegler became a role model for her younger sister. Even at the young age of nine- and 10, Buck knew she would follow in the footsteps of her sister Oneida.

By the time Buck graduated from high school, however, a three-year drought had depleted the savings of her family and that of many other farm families in the area. There was no money for Buck to attend college so her dream of becoming a teacher was set aside for a time.

Instead, she began working in the county recorder's office in Benton. Later, she married her husband, Kenneth Buck. The Bucks had three daughters and Bessie elected to stay home and raise the children. As the girls got older, the desire to be a schoolteacher returned and, at the encouragement of her husband, Buck enrolled in college. Although it wasn't easy, she graduated four years later in 1971, 20 years after graduating high school.

That fall, Buck began her first teaching job as elementary principal and remedial math instructor for grades one through six at Oak Ridge School.

The following year, she was hired to teach at Gordonville School and has been there since, watching towheaded youngsters running across the playground grow into adults taking on careers and beginning families.

In that time, two of her own daughters became schoolteachers. The third is a surgical nurse in Cape Girardeau.

Buck taught the first grade from 1972 until 1985, when she was named head teacher at Gordonville and moved up to teach the third grade.

The variety of students and the yearly class changes keep the profession exciting, the teacher explained.

"It's never boring because each student is different and each class is different so it's like starting over each school year," said Buck.

At the end of their third grade year, students at Gordonville take part in a full-fledged graduation ceremony with mortar boards and the playing of "Pomp and Circumstance." Even though the students are no longer running through the halls, they remain under Buck's watchful eye.

"I enjoy keeping up with my students in the news media after they move on to junior high and high school," said Buck. "You see the names of students involved in sports and on the honor roll and it's surprising how many of them come from this building."

She feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to teach at a small town school throughout her career.

"There are advantages to teaching at a small school," she said. "It's like a big family out here. For the most part, we get great parental support and I wonder if, at a bigger school, we would be able to get that kind of support."

Working with the students and watching as they progress through school has been the most rewarding part of Buck's career and it is the part she will miss the most.

"I am truly proud to have had the opportunity to share these students with their parents during the formative years," she said, adding that along with the children, many of the parents, fellow teachers, administrators and school employees have become dear friends.

Although there is much to be missed in retirement, there is much to look forward to as well.

"I am looking forward to retirement and doing some of those things I haven't had time for while I was teaching," she said. Bessie and her husband Kenneth plan to travel and do some camping with friends.

They also plan to spend more time with their family and four grandchildren. A fifth grandchild -- which Bessie Buck says is, "definitely a great retirement present" -- is expected in October.