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Dona Shreve, 79, has been a substitute teacher in Stafford for 17 years, after graduating from college at age 52. |
MY DAUGHTER,
"Mom, he said he was listening to the Redskins and the Eagles football game on the radio when the announcer came on and said Pearl Harbor had been bombed," she said excitedly. Maggie was so impressed he was around for that. Her class had been studying World War II, and here was someone who actually lived through it.
That sub had done for Maggie what a dry sound bite of a textbook could never do--he had brought that time alive for her. And this is my child who does not like history.
Naturally, I had to find out more about him. I was surprised that someone who could remember World War II was still teaching.
The sub's name is Dona Shreve. He's 79 and has been subbing for Stafford County schools for 17 years.
And Maggie is not the only child he has mesmerized.
"At the end of the day, he's never flustered with all these middle-schoolers," said Joanne Macdonald, an administrative assistant at Dixon-Smith Middle School. "He's sharp, he's witty, the kids love him."
And so do the staff. Macdonald said that one day he was subbing for one teacher in the morning and another in the afternoon. He joked that he'd be happy to sit for the ladies in the office as well.
A native of Smoke Hole, W. Va., Shreve grew up on a farm where, as he said, "You worked from dawn till dusk."
Neither of his parents was well educated, but they were very intelligent. They instilled in Shreve and his siblings the importance of education.
Shreve served three years in the Army during Korea, coming home after he suffered gunshot wounds to his abdomen. He enrolled in college; but his injuries prevented him from finishing, and he ended up spending a year in a veterans hospital.
Shreve had a successful career in finance and insurance, in both Baltimore and Fredericksburg. But the desire for a college degree never wavered. He graduated from Mary Mary Washington College when he was 52.
After he retired at 62, he said he wanted "to do something with his education."
He says he has subbed almost every day since he started 17 years ago, with the exception of this year, which has been a little slower.
In his spare time, Shreve has written and self-published three books about growing up in his small town in West Virginia.
Shreve lives with his wife of 34 years, Virginia, in Stafford. He has two children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
He's not the only member of his family who is still working and active. His 88-year-old brother still runs a tax service in West Virginia. Another brother is a sheep farmer back home. And his sister, who lives in Florida, is an entertainer and does seven or eight appearances a week.
Steve Trant, principal of Dixon-Smith, said the kids really respect Shreve and have a good time with him. He describes Shreve as "our most veteran sub." Trant said Shreve has a knack for showing the kids how to apply what they've learned.
Recently, Shreve was subbing in an Honors English class at North Stafford High School. The class was studying Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Shreve was leafing through the book when he spotted a footnote about Anne Hutchinson, an early New England religious dissident.
That reminded him of a story that had been handed down in his family, and he shared it with the class. Hutchinson left the Puritan church because she challenged many of its beliefs. In particular, she believed salvation came through grace, not works. Hutchinson, along with her friend Mary Dyer, was put on trial for heresy and banished from the Massachusetts Colony.
The women left the state, but the injustice of it bothered Dyer, who later went back to confront the governor and was arrested and hanged.
Dyer was Shreve's ancestor, eight generations back.
Shreve thinks the reason he gets along so well with the kids is because he reminds them of their grandfathers. And, he says with a smile, "kids like their grandparents better than their parents."
Shannon Howell is a freelance writer who lives in Stafford County. E-mail her at shannonh34@yahoo.com.
