"Ethel Acuff Poore, skilled Educator, successful Homemaker, straight Thinker in the Field of the Education of the Deaf, outstanding Executive, lifelong and devoted Friend of the Deaf." The preceding citation accompanied the award of an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, conferred upon Mrs. Poore in 1947 by Gallaudet College, the only institution of higher learning in the world exclusively for the deaf.

Born at Powell Station, Tennessee, January 19, 1894, Ethel was the daughter of Dr. Samuel David and Sarah Elizabeth O'Dell Acuff. Though little is known of Ethel's early life, it is a matter of record that she had two deaf sisters with whom she had close association. As a child she frequently visited the Tennessee School for the Deaf, where she played with deaf pupils. Certainly, these early associations through which she learned the sign language must have prepared her, in part, at least, for the thirty years of noble and unselfish service she was to render in this field of special education.

Dr. Poore began her career in the field of public education after receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Tennessee in 1913. She first held the position of teacher of home economics at Jackson High School, where she remained for two years. During 1917-18, she taught in Lewis County High School. In 1918 she became superintendent of education in Lewis County, the first woman to hold the office in that county. She continued in this position for five years.

In 1921 Mrs. Poore was appointed superintendent of the Tennessee School for the Deaf, following the resignation of Horace E. Walker, who was retiring because of ill health. Under Mrs. Poore's administration, the name of the school was changed from Deaf and Dumb Asylum to the Tennessee School for the Deaf. As a result of this change, the public began slowly to accept the institution as a residential school for the deaf rather than a place where abnormal children receive institutional care.

The school was moved in 1923 from the site it occupied in downtown Knoxville to its present location in the Island Home section of the city. At the time of Mrs. Poore's retirement in 1951, there were on the campus, in addition to the main building, two boys' dormitories, two girls' dormitories, a primary school building, a girls' vocational building, a boys' vocational building, a gymnasium, a hospital, a laundry, and a barn. The superintendent's home was a former residence. Before her retirement, Mrs. Poore had been instrumental in acquiring an appropriation of a million dollars for buildings which have since been erected.

Under her exemplary leadership, the Tennessee school came to be recognized as one of the outstanding state schools in the United States, though it was operated on a lower-than -average budget in comparison with other residential schools for the deaf.

Dr. Poore's marked success as an administrator, along with her numerous contributions to her chosen profession, have brought "to her, to the School for the Deaf, and to the State of Tennessee many rare distinctions. Her life story is a succession of 'firsts'." She was the first woman superintendent of a state institution in Tennessee and the only woman superintendent of a state residential school for the deaf in the United States with an enrollment as large as that of the Tennessee school. She was the first and only woman ever to be elected president of the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, the largest and oldest organization of its kind in the world, having been in existence for more than 110 years.

As a member of the Board of Directors of the Conference of Executives of American Schools for the Deaf for several years, Dr. Poore rendered valuable service in this field. In addition, she served two years as vice-president of the group, held membership for a number of years on the teacher training committee, and served as head of teacher placement. She was the second woman to be awarded an honorary degree by Gallaudet College, Washington, D.C., and the first person to be named "Woman of the Year in Education of the Deaf" by the Alpha Sigma Pi Fraternity at Gallaudet College.

For several years Mrs. Poore served as a director of the Volta Speech Association; after her retirement she continued to serve as a member of the Auxiliary Board. In both the Tennessee Education Association and the East Tennessee Education Association, she was the first chairman of the special committees on education of the exceptional child.

At the time of Dr. Poore's retirement in 1951, Hershal R. Ward, principal of the School for the Deaf, wrote of her: "we shall remember her as an individual of great determination and courage, always ready to fight for the very best for the school. ... We shall remember her as an individual with a rich sense of humor -- an attribute which helped to carry her smiling through many a difficult day. Her sense of humor has made it possible for her to laugh over our blunders at a time when we might have expected censure. It has likewise enabled her to achieve the far more difficult thing of laughing with us when the joke was on her.

"We shall remember her as a person whose philosophy was that every bit of work performed, no matter how small, was worthy of her best effort. We shall remember her as a person not fully known until one had been a guest in her home, for here one caught facets of her personality not revealed amid the workaday activities of the school environment. ... It is the ultimate tribute that she has achieved as wife and mother the same lofty plane as in her professional field of activity.

"We think of her today as a treasured friend and fellow worker -- will one of our school family, ex-officio, in the days ahead, one whose whole-hearted interest we profoundly sense, whose sincere, good wishes for our welfare here at the school will continue active and vital always. With her go in overflowing measure our own heartfelt best wishes and our most earnest prayers that the best, which she so consistently gave throughout her years of service, may return to her and hers a hundredfold. We shall labor with the firm conviction that her interests and aspirations are bound up in ours, and that she will continue to watch with deepest concern the growth and progress of the Tennessee School for the Deaf in the era that lies ahead."

The immeasurable contribution made by Ethel Acuff Poore to the State of Tennessee and to the School for the Deaf, which she served for thirty years, can be observed not only in the expanse of buildings which make up the physical plant of the school but in the records of the hundreds of men and women whose lives bear the indelible marks of her "wise guidance and high inspiration."

Source: Light from Many Candles: A History of Pioneer Women in Education in Tennessee, by Lucille Rogers. Published by Xi State, Delta Kappa Gamma.McQuiddy Printing Company, Nashville, 1960. Transcribed for this site by Char.