R.B. CREECY JR.
After 47 years spent in teaching a preparatory school for boys in Elizabeth City, R.B. Creecy Jr. confesses that he regrets having followed a teacher’s career, because having lived so much among boys, and associating so little with grown people, he now feels unnatural and out of place among men of his own age. “Besides,” says Prof. Creecy, “people seem nowadays to be measured in the estimation of the community by the amount of the money they have managed to accumulate. That is unfair, for the real worth of a man is determined by what he does for other people, and not by what he does for himself.”
“Of course,” adds Prof. Creecy, “I don’t regret what I’ve done to help young fellows to get a start in life. It has always been my policy to never consider the circumstances of pupils admitted to my school, and some of the most creditable ones I have turned out have been those with the least advantages.”
Prof. Creecy began teaching others at the age of 16. He runs his school about 10 months of the year, conducting both day and night sessions. During the two months his school is closed, he gives tuition by mail to students all over Northeastern North Carolina. One of his most notable classes was conducted two years ago when 30 and odd young men in the Coast Guard were coached by him for a Civil Service examination. Altho these pupils were taught by mail and their teacher never saw them, they all passed the examination, and today several of them are keepers of Coast Guard Stations.
Richard Bembury Creecy Jr. is the son of the late Col. R.B. Creecy who ran a newspaper here for many years following the Civil war. “The Economist” was one newspaper of the section in its day, and its editor was one of the most notable lawyers and historians of Eastern North Carolina. He never allowed his children to be taught outside his own home, preferring to teach them himself, in his own way. He was a stern disciplinarian and suffered no infraction of the paternal rules, by the children. Such training had no small effect on the younger Creecy who profited by what his elder taught, and has used it to serve him in the schoolroom for 47 years.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., July 7, 1922
No comments:
Post a Comment