Kathleen S. Hey Cowdrey

K. Shirley Hey, whose full name was Kathleen Shirley Hey, was born on October 12, 1922. She trained as a teacher at the State Teachers College at Lowell, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education, and taught for two and a half years before coming to Billerica. In his report for 1947 the Superintendent of Schools recorded that "Miss K. Shirley Hey of Lawrence, Massachusetts, a graduate of Lowell State Teachers College," had been elected to a third grade position at the Talbot School in North Billerica. She married Francis M. Cowdrey (1923 to 1998), a Coast Guard veteran of the Second World War, and from 1949 the school reports list her as K. Shirley Cowdrey.

She taught at the Talbot School until 1950, in the third through sixth grades, then taught a sixth grade in the Old Howe School building at Billerica Centre in 1951 and 1952, alongside Catherine L. Torre, and at the Pollard School in 1953 and 1954. By 1955 she had added a Master of Education from Calvin Coolidge College, and that year she became teaching principal of the Pollard School, succeeding Thomas W. Sykes and still teaching its sixth grade.

In 1956, when the School Committee removed Esther A. Moglia as principal of the Ditson School in Pinehurst and sent her to the Pollard, Mrs. Cowdrey was placed in charge of the Ditson as its principal. The move lasted a single school year. After more than a year of protest the committee restored Miss Moglia in 1957, and Mrs. Cowdrey went back to the Pollard as principal and sixth grade teacher. From 1957 the Pollard School housed sixth graders only, and her reports to Superintendent Frederick C. Riel trace a school that was full and almost entirely bused: opening enrollment rose from 216 in 1960 to 237 in 1962, when "no class has less than 40 pupils" and 84 percent of the children came by bus. She organized a spring baseball program for the boys, took pupils to the Children's Book Fair at New England Mutual Hall in Boston, and with the music supervisor Elizabeth L. Johnson put on the operetta "Cowboy on the Moon"; in 1962 and 1963 her faculty took a workshop in the new "Modern Mathematics."

In September 1963 she succeeded Helen E. Schult as principal of the Eugene C. Vining School in the Nuttings Lake area, a school of 679 pupils on opening day. Her first report told how the school's Thanksgiving program, prepared by Mrs. Celeste Stuart, was turned in the days after President Kennedy's assassination into "a tribute for our president." By 1964 the Vining held 674 pupils in 18 classrooms when 21 were needed, and the fifth and sixth grades went on double sessions. In 1964 thirty-six Vining fifth graders represented the Billerica schools at a Bridgewater State educators' conference, and in 1965 the school was host to a dinner meeting of thirty-seven principals of the Merrimack Valley Elementary School Principals Association addressed by the president of the National Education Association. She introduced modern mathematics into the first and second grades, began a "Parent of the Week" visiting program, and favored integrated units that joined history, geography, art and music; a visiting professor from the University of Oregon summed up the fifth grade's work as "Good teaching, an up to date curriculum, and wonderfully responsive children." In 1967 the Vining was chosen to take part in the State Department of Education's spring workshop at Lowell State College, where its fifth grade presented "Backgrounds of Americana" to more than three hundred fifty educators.

Mrs. Cowdrey led the Vining School for fifteen years and retired in 1978, after thirty-one years in the Billerica schools. The Superintendent, naming her among that year's retirements, wrote that "We lost the services of some excellent staff" who "will be difficult to replace." She was followed at the Vining by Francis X. Callahan. She died on February 24, 2009, and was buried beside her husband in Fox Hill Cemetery in Billerica.

References

1. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1947 (Miss K. Shirley Hey of Lawrence elected to a third grade position at the Talbot School)
2. Billerica Town Report: School Department staff list, 1955 (Pollard School, K. Shirley Cowdrey, Principal, Grade 6; Lowell B.S.E., Calvin Coolidge M.Ed.; began 1947)
3. Billerica Town Report: School Department staff list, 1956 (Ditson School, K. Shirley Cowdrey, Principal)
4. Billerica Town Report: Report of Pollard School, 1962 (enrollment, busing, operetta, Book Fair, Modern Mathematics workshop; signed Shirley Cowdrey, Principal)
5. Billerica Town Report: Report of E. C. Vining School, 1963 (her first report as principal; Kennedy tribute program)
6. Billerica Town Report: E. C. Vining School report, 1964 (674 pupils, double sessions, Bridgewater conference; signed Shirley Cowdrey)
7. Billerica Town Report: Eugene C. Vining School report, 1965 (modern math, Parent of the Week, principals association meeting, Professor Nye visit)
8. Billerica Town Report: Eugene C. Vining School report, 1967 (State Department of Education spring workshop, Backgrounds of Americana)
9. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1978 (retirement of Mrs. Shirley Cowdrey, Principal of the Vining Elementary School)
10. Find a Grave: Kathleen Shirley Hey Cowdrey (1922 to 2009), Fox Hill Cemetery, Billerica; birth and death dates, spouse Francis M. Cowdrey