• Who was Ruth Parker Eason?

     Ruth Eason      Lived:

          1897-1978

         Occupation:

         Teacher, Supervisor of Special Education

         Known for:

         Instrumental in opening a school for students with special needs

     

     Ruth Lavinder Parker Eason was a teacher who specialized in educating children and young adults with disabilities. During her career, she also served as

    Supervisor of Special Education in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools and was instrumental in opening a school dedicated to students with special needs.

    When Ms. Eason began teaching in AACPS in 1915, there were only 7,000 students in the school system, and her annual salary was $350. By the time she retired 47 years later, 44,000 students were being educated throughout Anne Arundel County.

    Eason was born and raised in Glen Burnie and never lived more than a few miles from the place of her birth. She was a fixture in the community and her church. Over the course of almost five decades, she served as supervisor of elementary education and special education for the county, as well as teaching at Glen Burnie, Ferndale, and Richard Henry Lee elementary schools.

    Eason also served as alumni president for the Maryland State Teachers College at Towson, which is now called Towson University.

    In the preface to her book, History of the Town of Glen Burnie, Eason has described this way:

    "If Ruth has stayed close to the place of her birth if her strength has been drawn from the soil and air of Anne Arundel County and Glen Burnie, it has been sustained by the world beyond. Ruth is no stay-at-home. She went to Baltimore, New York, and California for her higher education; to Canada for her honeymoon; to Norway for the wedding of her only son; to Alaska to London to Hawaii to Mexico to the Holy Land for her personal enrichment. Always her heart has come home again.

    Eason died in 1978 and is buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn Park. The Ruth Parker Eason School was named in her honor when it opened in 1985, and now educates more than 120 students between the ages of 3 and 21.