Thursday, March 30, 2017
She was our first high school teacher and we were her first class. As we wandered the halls of Harbord Collegiate that morning in September, 1949, together, she didn't pretend to be other than what we girls were----------LOST. We knew right then that we had hit the jackpot.
She set standards and expectations and she guided us in our bewildered adolescsnce with warmth and humour. With hindsight, I believe that her faith gave her the forbearance to put up with the noisy shenanigans of those children of immigrants----that and her sense of humour; she always had a ready laugh. We loved her and always did and we knew it was reciprocated.
There were a small handful of kids in the school who had survived the Holocaust--mainly as hidden children. Miss Staples could not then have known what they had endured or whom they had lost, yet she was so careful with them.
Later, when she returned to the classroom, she taught my children at Associated Hebrew Schools. I used to rib her that she could not bear to be away from us for very long.
You know that some of us kept contact with over the years; it feels as if a chunk of our youth has been taken from us. I hope you have kept those "little" black books of the student records; they are treasures. How we laughed as she remembered our idiosyncracies ---and our work-----when she brought one to one of our get-togethers.
I hope that the wonderful memories of Elizabeth Staples Vowles will sustain you in your loss. May her memory ever be a blessing.
Sincerely,
Pearl (Friedberg) Hermant
