Name/Title
Amy Bull Crist - Sept 14, 1959 "The Middletown Daily Record"Entry/Object ID
000522Tags
Amy Bull Crist, Bull Stone HouseScope and Content
Document Transcription: 522.jpg
THE MIDDLETOWN DAILY RECORD MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1959
PEOPLE OF INTEREST
by Coultan Waugh and Odin Waugh
(Illustration of a stone house)
ORIGINAL BULL STONE HOUSE
(Portrait illustration of Amy Bull Crist)
AMY BULL CRIST
[Column 1]
When Amy Bull Crist strides in her determined way across the
stage of some auditorium where large numbers of teachers are
gathered, she leans forward and in her bright clear voice seems to
be talking to every individual in the audience personally. She seems
to have all her teachers' first names stored in her pocket and
she scatters them out over the audience along with her fresh
home-grown humor with the result that every one feels at ease right
away. Since I was one of Amy's teachers for two years, I speak of
her system from experience. Whenever you meet her, it's the
same - she sets you right at ease. However, once that's done,
she grabs you by the back of your neck and gives you a tremendous
kick in the pride, which you feel tingling there for weeks. She gives
you to understand that to be a teacher is the most outstanding thing
on earth and that you've got to live up to it by being a model
human being in every possible way, from taking that extra course
at New Paltz down to polishing those shoes three times a day,
throwing out your chest and pulling in your stomach.
Personally, I'm all for this. Teaching is an underpaid and arduous profession, but three things reward the teacher: the warmth of the kids, the regularity of the pay and the satisfaction of putting all one's efforts on the side of
decency and intelligence - reason enough for a high sense of
personal pride and an extra polish on your shoes.
Amy's ancestors, William Bull and Sarah Wells, have interested
me ever since I first came to Orange County. There is a strength
and dignity of Orange County stone houses - we live in one and it
keeps telling me about its past. William Bull was the first and
most famous builder of stone houses here. Seven Bull generations back, he came from England to settle and establish claim to the land called the "Wawayanda Patent," described in an old document as "10 or 12 miles to ye
westward of Hudson's River upon ye waggon rode yet leadeth from
William Sutherland his house to Wawayonde." In the meantime,
young Miss Sarah Wells, came travelling upcountry to settle and
claim a patent for a Mr. Denn. She voyaged upriver in a scow
to New Windsor, and rode westward along the Otterkill Creek -
the route which is named in her honor: The Sarah Wells Trail.
"The pioneers didn't waste time in those days," Amy Bull Crist
told us. "Almost as soon as William and Sarah met, they were
married. Soon William took time from his job of building other
people's houses to construct one for Sarah. This house, put up in
1727, is still standing - it is in Hamptonburgh, just off the Sarah
Wells Trail about four miles northeast of Goshen. This is where we
Bull family people hold our annual picnic. As to me, I was simply
a young woman raised in the Bull-family farming tradition, and quite
contented to go on that way." "And then?" I asked, glancing
outside to the fine red buildings of her husband's farm and trying
to reconcile the rural setting with the busy clicking of typewriters in
her farm house-office where the multiple details incidental to the
job of a district school superintendent were being attended to.
"A district superintendent of those days, Sanford Cartright, got
the idea that I might take over a little school at a place we called
'Goosetown.' I said no. But Mr. Cartright came again during the
haying season. I was very hot; my face and hair were filled with
hayseed. I thought it over, and said yes." At once, it seems, young Amy
Bull fell in love with teaching and everything connected with it.
Not contented with a one-room school teacher's role, she com-
muted to New York and New Paltz and started collecting degrees
(actually she is only a thesis away from a doctorate.) As of last June,
she completed 35 years in the school business. In 1940, she was
elected district superintendent and
[Column 3]
she has seen her supervisory district grow from 148 teachers to
700; from 3,000 pupils to over 14,000. Naturally, we asked the $64
million question: What's being done about more science teaching in
our schools? "What we need is to better train and inspire our classroom
teachers," Mrs. Crist said. "We must improve the QUALITY of instruction - at the same time; children must be urged to work up to capacity."
The windup of this interview really tells a big story of a farm
girl and the twists of her career. "What is your hobby?" Odin
asked, and our smartly-dressed superintendent replied, without the
slightest hesitation: "Farming. I can't retire just yet - I'm sending a niece
and a nephew through college - but when I do, I'm going to team up
with Mrs. Katharine St. George and we're going to breed cattle
on my father's farm." That's a story, isn't it? Farm
girl wipes sweat of haying off brow, goes into teaching, makes
big success, number of years later wipes educational sweat off brow,
goes back into farming. But those cows had better look sharp. If I
know Amy, they're going to have to take college courses to stay
in HER barn. Odin expressed another idea going home, "You batted your
heart out when you were in Amy's stable of teachers," she said.
"Those cows will too. They'll let down all the milk they've got
and then half again more."