Margaret J. Cress

is honored with a Brick from Allan M. Cress.

We went to kindergarten together, then didn't get back in the same school until seventh grade, and then graduated together. But we didn't even have a date until we came home from separate colleges for Thanksgiving vacation of our freshman year. After graduation in 1942, M.J. taught high school while I went to the Army. In August of 1944, she became a war bride and did substitute teaching in northern Maine.

Then, staring in 1946, she worked at a child placement agency while I worked my way through graduate school. The birth of our daughter in 1950 put a stop to that. A year after I had finished graduate school, we came to Wichita where she worked at Kansas Children's Service League and worked at WU in order to certify to teach secondary school in Kansas. Then she spent a year with me on a Fulbright exchange in Germany, with our five year old daughter and our son, who was barely three months old when we left Wichita. Now, that's heroic!

Back in Wichita, she was busy mother, church member, PTA member and officer, and an active member of University Dames and AAUW. After both children were well launched and reliably self-propelled, she went back to teaching. She spent 15 years teaching business courses and, for most of that time, serving as senior class moderator at Mt. Carmel Academy/Kapaun-Mt. Carmel High School.

Now "retired" since 1983, she shoulders a full load of responsibilities at church, AAUW, University Dames, in volunteering at Red Cross bloodmobiles, driving elderly friends to doctors' appointments, and performing countless spontaneous acts of kindness. That's the heroine I recognize, honor, and love.

Submitted by Allan M. Cress

July 7, 1998 (for Margaret J. Cress, "M.J.")