"A teacher acquires many friends -- and if she teaches more than half a century she is likely to have thousands of them. That is the story of Mrs. Dora Kennedy, who retired after teaching fifty-two years in the primary grades of Knox County Schools." These lines appeared in a newspaper report of a surprise party honoring Mrs. Kennedy on the occasion of her seventy-fourth birthday.

On October 16, 1871, E. M. Kennedy, the schoolmaster, declared a holiday, sent the pupils on their way, and locked the door of the little Mosheim School. It was an important day, for a baby daughter had just been born in the log cabin home of Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy. Perhaps the day was even more significant than the schoolmaster knew, for this baby, Dora Kennedy, was destined to touch the lives of hundreds of boys and girls, teaching them by methods not yet in general use.

After completing her secondary education at Chilhowee Institute in Knoxville, Dora attended the University of Tennessee and Peabody College for Teachers. She was married to A. Strong Kennedy, who had taught her in the seventh grade.

Mrs. Kennedy taught her first school in a log house at Hopewell, and her last in a new brick building called the Dora Kennedy School. She taught all grades in the elementary school and served as principal for some years. Dora replied, "Well, third grade is nice, but I like first." Then she added, "You know in first grade, you can walk by sight; you get the children just as God made them."

A pioneer in the employment of the laboratory method of teaching, Mrs. Kennedy had a deep love of nature, and she used the great outdoors as her laboratory. She took her pupils on frequent field trips, using the farm adjacent to the school, so that they might have opportunity to observe birds, animals, and plant life. She led them to the creek where she built islands, peninsulas, and straits. A principal who had taught some of Mrs. Kennedy's former pupils said, "I can always recognize the pupils Miss Dora has taught because they have good understanding, they have mastered the necessary skills, and they have acquired a good stock of information."

Mrs. Kennedy's fifty-two years of teaching was interrupted by only three years of absence, during which time her two children, Wendell and Ila, were born. During a period of thirty years, she was absent from school only one day. Because of the serious illness of her husband, Miss Dora retired in 1943 at the age of seventy-one. However, she did not give up her work altogether, for she continued teaching primary children in Sunday School.

Miss Dora spent thirty years of her life teaching at Moshiem School in a one-room building, which stood where the Dora Kennedy School is now situated. When the time came for the old building to be torn down to make way for the new one, Miss Dora, arranged to have it moved to her farm. She said to friends, "I just can't bear to part with the old building; it stands for so much that is good!"

What was there about Dora Kennedy which prompted a community to pay her the high honor of naming its new school for her? The Research Committee of the Zeta Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma in Knoxville sought the answer to this question. They spent an afternoon with Mrs. Kennedy in the fall of 1945. They found her keenly interested in all things about her and enthusiastic about modern trends in education. They were impressed by her depth of understanding, her sense of humor, and her obvious enjoyment of life. They found in these characteristics the answer to their question.

Dora Kennedy had a love for learning, a love for nature, a love for God and man. These things, together with a skill in teaching children, made her a superior teacher.

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.