Publication Date

March 1, 2000

Perspectives Section

In Memoriam

On December 13, 1999, our profession lost a wonderful and beloved teacher and scholar when Emily Rose Warner passed away in Durham, North Carolina, after a long battle with ovarian cancer. She was 61. Emily was born in the Duke Hospital on May 24, 1938. She graduated from Durham High School in 1956 and received a BA from Vassar College in 1960 and an MA in teaching from Duke University in 1962. On June 16, 1960, she was married to Seth L. Warner.

Emily taught civics at Carr Junior High School in Durham from 1960 until regulations concerning pregnancy required her resignation at the end of the fall semester of 1962. Upon special request, however, she continued teaching during February 1963, the month Carr Junior High School was integrated. Returning to teaching in 1978, she taught U.S. history and Women's history at Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham County. She taught the first Women's history course at the school.

From 1990 to 1994, Emily was a workshop leader for the National Leadership Program for Teachers, a program sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and funded by the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. She was a member of a team of four teachers who traveled the nation offering one-week workshops on integrating new scholarship on social history into the U.S. history survey. During the academic year 1992–93, Emily was on leave as one of 38 recipients nationwide of a Teacher-Scholar Award, for excellence in teaching, from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award permitted recipients to undertake scholarly study of a topic of their own choosing; Emily's topic was the history of American women to 1920.

As an outgrowth of her research, she participated as a member of a panel entitled "Women's History in the K–12 Classroom" at the Tenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in 1996. She was also a faculty consultant in U.S. history for the Advanced Placement program.

Owing to her illness, Emily retired from teaching in February 1995. She is survived by her husband of 39 years, Seth Warner, three children, and five grandchildren.

—Howard Schorr, Portland, Or.
—Carl Schulkin, Pembroke Hill School, Kansas City, Mo.
—Susan Ikenberry, Georgetown Day School, Washington, D.C.

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