When Viola Stearn started working at Potomac Elementary, “the war” meant the Second World War. When she retired recently, it meant the second gulf war.
Stearn, 88, who started substitute teaching at the school in 1945, loved every minute of the time she spent there, especially the children. “I enjoyed them all, everything about them,” Stearn said.
Many in the community are saddened by her departure. “In a very busy world, she was a piece of stability,” said Potomac parent Janice Sartucci.
Stearn’s relationship with the school started before she even lived in Potomac. Her husband, Preston “Blackie” Stearn, lived where the Pepco building on River Road near Potomac Elementary is now. He attended the school when it was a two-room schoolhouse and his family would sometimes provide the teachers with room and board.
“My husband told me, once, that some of the students used to arrive in a horse and buggy,” Stearn said.
After she married Blackie, the couple moved into her husband’s family home in 1936. When she first arrived, there were no traffic lights and only one grocery store. “It was just a small, little town,” Stearn said.
During the war, gas rationing, a lack of transportation, and the fact that River Road was paved only as far as the school made it difficult for some of the teachers to make it to class sometimes, so they approached her to substitute.
“I got started by knowing the teachers,” Stearn said. None of the women who started subbing around that time stayed at the school for nearly as long. Initially, she was an aide.
She would help across the school, from the classroom to the lunchroom, but she didn’t really have a favorite. “When you worked with the teacher you wanted to make sure you tried extra hard,” Stearn said.
“We had teachers come in and train us,” she said. She wasn’t nervous when she went in front of the classroom for the first time, she said.
“The teacher gave us a lesson plan, and I knew that I could carry those through,” Stearn said.
Even though she spent so much time at the school, she never really considered becoming a full-time teacher. “I was just happy with what I was doing,” Stearn said.
Occasionally, students would come up to her and tell her that she had taught their parents. “I would tell them, ‘Well, I hope I was nice to your mother or father,’” she said.
Stearn does not believe that the children of Potomac have changed very much in the past 60 years. “Most of them were very easy to work with and were eager to learn,” Stearn said. “I enjoyed them all, everything about them.”
The school has certainly changed, and she thinks it’s for the better that programs such as band and a reading and math specialist have been added. “I think the resource teachers benefit the children,” she said.
In all her time, she could not pick out a favorite student. “The majority were easy to work with,” Stearn said. She did note, however, “there were a few who were a little hard to handle.” Even when she encountered one of the few who weren’t so easy to work with, she tried to be nice.
“She was very sweet with the kids,” said Tina Tomblin, assistant secretary at the school. “She was just really happy and joyful.”
Stearn has now moved in with her daughter in Ocean Pines, Md., where she may continue her work as a substitute teacher.
Part of her, however, will remain at the school on River Road. “It was very hard to leave Potomac,” she said.