Esther Elizabeth Wood
Blue Hill, Maine
Esther E. Wood, a model for the women of Maine, is a natural teacher of history: a descendant of pre-1790 settlers who came to the Eastern Maine towns of Ellsworth, Deer Isle, and Blue Hill.
A graduate of George Stevens Academy in 1922, Colby College in 1926, and Radcliffe College in 1929, her love of history took her to Gorham Normal School, where she taught history on the same hillside campus for forty-two years, 1930 - 1972.
Her teaching helped women teach children and young adults to become everything they could be. She taught compassion, love, and improved reading skills along with Maine and American history.
As an author she has published four books, including Country Fare and Deep Roots: A Maine Legacy, about family, cooking, and living at Friends Corner, overlooking beautiful Blue Hill Bay.
Miss Wood wrote columns for the Christian Science Monitor for over a decade, and was a regular columnist for the Ellsworth American with her "Native" column. She is also well known for her stories in Sunday School papers and children's magazines.
Esther has received many well-deserved awards over her years of formal teaching: a lecture room at George Stevens Academy and a dormitory on the Gorham campus bear her name; the Blue Hill Chamber of Commerce named her "Woman of the Year"; the Maine School Superintendents' Association honored her "For distinguished service to education in Maine", and Colby College awarded her a Doctorate of Humane Letters honoris causa.
She will be remembered for her keen mind, wit and humor, her gentleness and graciousness, and her achievement of excellence in translating for her hundreds of thousands of students the value and qualities of the past into terms that could be understood in the changing world of the present.
Miss Wood still teaches history as she presents lectures and gives small talks and informal speeches in her native Blue Hill. She writes the stories in pamphlets describing places to visit when in the area.
Esther Elizabeth Wood will long be respected and loved by her former students for her teaching of the past, her concern for the present, and the foundation she provided for the future.
1994 Photograph
Inducted March, 1994