To the Editor:
Nowhere in your lengthy February 8 discussion of the impending fate of the Agnes Gray School in West Paris could I find any mention whatsoever of who Agnes Gray herself might have been. It’s sort of a shame since she taught school in south Paris and West Paris all her life and did it extraordinarily well.
A firm but fair disciplinarian, Agnes took pleasure in straightening out her difficult students, and she took lifelong pleasure in their later success. She knew every animal, bird, flower, and tree around her property by habit, purpose, and name, and she shared all her knowledge generously. Agnes Gray was, in short, a walking education.
My brother and I believe ourselves to be Agnes Gray’s last living relatives – a cousin on our mother’s side. We knew her as Cousin Agnes from 1946 until her death in the late 1970s.
We remember her for her warm cordiality, her many amusing expressions and idiosyncracies, and her Jacob’s Cattle baked beans – by far the best I’ve ever tasted.
My wife Cordy and I have spent every summer since 1982 in the log cabin she built on Round Pond. The cabin belongs to us, but we carefully treat it as Cousin Agnes would have wanted.
Whatever happens to Agnes Gray’s school, her name and memory should somehow be allowed to linger in the annals of Oxford County education.
John Swinton
State College, PA
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