I was at SRV from kindergarten through fifth grade: 1939 through to May of 1944. (I think I have the years correct.) My parents had older siblings in college so I didn’t finish at SRV but went to Wallingford Elementary for my 6th grade year. I look back very fondly to teachers I had: Grace Rotzel, Peg Nowell, Lucy Stevens, Miriam Elsbree, Edward Rawson, Margaret Rawson, and so forth. These were great people who personified a caring and loving attitude toward all of us. They had a huge influence on me, I’m sure, for all my years. I graduated from Nether Providence High in 1952, and then went to Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, that fall.
I was not a good student at Earlham my first two years, so after my sophomore year, I took a few years off to grow up a bit. I returned to Earlham and finished in 1959. Circumstances brought me to Colorado in 1959 where I worked for Sears for a year until I decided that the retail world was not for me. I returned to college in Colorado for a few months and earned enough hours in Education so that I could become a junior high school teacher. I was hired by Air Academy School District 20 to teach social studies in their junior high school in the Fall of 1961.
I retired from that in 1989 after 28 years. If I was a caring and thoughtful and compassionate teacher to junior high and middle school kids, I would hope that the role models I had from the teachers at SRV influenced me all those years. During that time I became a professional photographer doing weddings, families, high school senior portraits, and high school teams. During the 1980s and 90s I was doing about 40+ weddings each year and had a thriving business. Since retiring from teaching I became very involved in the sport of badminton. I first had a taste of it at Earlham with the badminton club there and got back into the sport after my retirement in 1989.
I’ve been very blessed with how this sport has kept me young, shall we say; and I’ve had a fairly high level of accomplishment in playing. I’ve participated and won many medals in several national tournaments over the years, and in many, many Colorado annual tournaments, and was elected to the Colorado Badminton Hall of Fame in 2009. At 80 years of age, now, I still work driving for a courier company delivering items part time each day to customers in Colorado Springs. I’m still active with the Pikes Peak Badminton Club, playing a few times each week. I still fly fish Colorado rivers for rainbows and browns.
First off, as you can guess from my name, I’m a long time member of the SRV family, my father is Jerry Nowell, my grandmother was Peg Nowell (who taught there in the early 60’s?)…sisters Connie and Nancy, and my...
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