Remembering Miss Hastings
More than 60 years of service in Fairhaven educational and civic activities
It was a Monday night in late January, 1967, and the school committee had asked Fairhaven Junior High School principal Elizabeth Hastings to give them a tour of the nine year old building prior to a discussion on the school’s budget. The committee members seemed especially interested in the northern part of the building, far away from the entrance and out of sight of the parking lot. They took their time on this errand, almost too much time, but Miss Hastings showed them what they wanted to see and answered all of their questions. She knew how committees could be, having seen enough of their workings during her forty-six years of duty within the school system. This was just another of those routine after-hours duties that she was used to. Business as usual.
Until the small group returned down the darkened corridor to the school library.
Inside the room, Miss Hastings found that during the tour, some fifty school staffers and members of the press had gathered. “My goodness. What on earth is everyone doing here?” she asked.
Quickly, the committee sat down and chairman Austin P. Skinner called a meeting to order. Member Walter Borowicz then stood and reported that the junior high school staff had made a recommendation to the committee that would now be acted upon. He held up a document and read, “Whereas Miss Elizabeth I. Hastings has devoted forty eight years to teaching children and whereas her guidance and inspiration contributed to the benefit of her students and whereas her outstanding volunteer community service through loyal, faithful and unselfish efforts resulted in a lasting contribution to our community and in appreciation for her devotion to the cause of education, I hereby move that the Fairhaven Junior High School be named the Elizabeth I. Hastings Junior High School, effective June 1, 1967.”
The school committee’s unanimous vote was followed by enthusiastic applause from the crowd. It was a singular honor, not only having a school named after her while she was still alive, but also while she was still the active principal there. The effective date of the naming, June 1, would be Miss Hastings’ sixty-ninth birthday.
The following year she would turn seventy and state law would force her retirement from the school department. The law could not force her to slow down, though. Elizabeth I. Hastings still had more than twenty years of community service ahead of her.
Elizabeth Ingelow Hastings was born on June 1, 1898, in Philadelphia, PA, to Albert C. and Annie E. Hastings. Visits at a very young age to some of the nation’s most important historical sites may have stirred her lifelong interest in history. Having parents who were musically inclined was another early influence. When she was still quite young, her family moved to Massachusetts. Miss Hastings attended Pittsfield elementary schools and took private lessons on piano and cello. Later in life she recalled she was kept busy as a musical accompanist during high school. Following graduation from Wellesley High School, she enrolled at Smith College. Relatives suggested she should become a teacher. After two years at Smith, she transferred to Boston University where she received a degree in education.
Right out of college, Miss Hastings took her first teaching job—grades one through eight in a one-room school house near Moosup, CT. The next year, she taught third and fourth grades in Goodyear, CT.
In 1921, Elizabeth Hastings accepted a teaching position at Rogers School in Fairhaven.
At that time, the town’s quickly growing population numbered about 7,300. A home building boom in the northern and eastern parts of Fairhaven had resulted in the recent building of two new schools, Job C. Tripp School (1918) and the Edmund Anthony Jr. School (1921). Both of those schools held classes for grades one through seven, as did Oxford School. In the center of town, grades one through four were taught at the Washington Street School, also known as the Rogers School Annex. Rogers School was filled to capacity with students in grades five, six and seven, as well as all of the town’s one-hundred eighth graders.
Miss Hastings, teaching grade seven history and civics, was one of seventeen new teachers beginning work in September of that year. That number, representing forty-six percent of the town’s teaching staff, was an indication of the high turnover rate Fairhaven experienced. It was attributed to low pay and to single female teachers leaving their careers for marriage. Earning a bit more than $100 a month, Miss Hastings settled in for the long haul. It didn’t take long for her to begin making a mark on her adopted community.
In her second year at Rogers, Miss Hastings started a school orchestra. It wasn’t big. By 1926 there were just sixteen members—nine violins, two saxophones, a piano, a flute, a cornet, a drum and a trombone. It was, however, the first elementary school orchestra the town had ever had. And soon they were taking their show on the road. They played at the Methodist Church. They appeared at the First Congregational Church. They played several selections at the annual dinner of the Fairhaven Improvement Association. It was obvious nearly from the start of her career that Miss Hastings wouldn’t be satisfied being stuck behind a teacher’s desk inside a classroom.
Getting teachers and students out of the schools and into the community was one of Miss Hastings’ guiding philosophies. In her role as a social studies teacher, she frequently took her students on field trips. Of a Saturday visit to the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company in New Bedford, one of her students wrote in 1926, “[We] were carefully shown, by guides, through the departments where glass is made, where lamp-shades are painted, where paper boxes are turned out, and where the gold and silver plating is done. We all enjoyed the trip and feel that we know vastly more concerning how glass is made. . . .” In her role as the director of orchestras and bands she took her musicians far and wide to perform in public. As an influential force with the Fairhaven Junior Improvement Association, which was founded by Superintendent of Schools Charles Prior in 1921, Miss Hastings supervised youngsters in many civic projects.
One of those youngsters was Leonard Pierce, who was in her eighth grade civics class in the 1930s. “What I remember most was her work with F.J.I.A.,” Pierce recalls. “She had us pulling up ragweed all over town. I think they burned it.” Like many of her pupils, Pierce’s recollections mingle both fondness and a certain amount of awe. “She was a wonderful woman,” he says, “But scary. . . .”
The opening of the new addition to Fairhaven High School in September of 1931 brought the town’s eighth graders to that building. For thirteen years Miss Hastings taught social studies and instrumental music there. She also served as the eighth grade guidance advisor.
During this time, she was also furthering her own education, taking graduate courses in school music supervision at Boston University. A musical mentor at this time was Clarence W. Arey, supervisor of New Bedford’s instrumental music program and founder of the New Bedford Symphony. Arey was hired by Fairhaven on a part-time basis to direct the high school band from 1927 until 1948. Miss Hastings conducted the senior orchestra and an advanced ensemble at Fairhaven High School and a combined orchestra made up of musicians from all of the elementary schools. In 1940 she was appointed Supervisor of Instrumental Music for the entire school system.
In 1941, Elizabeth Hastings was awarded a master’s degree in education, cum laude, from Boston University. In a classic example of the adage, “the more you do, the more they give you to do,” the superintendent of schools decided in 1944 to make Miss Hastings the principal of both Anthony and Tripp schools simultaneously. She stopped her regular classroom teaching duties at that time, but kept her musical duties. After two years, she was relieved of the Anthony School principalship so that she could take charge of psychological testing and screenings throughout the school system. In 1948, when Mr. Arey resigned from his part-time Fairhaven job, Miss Hastings took over directing the senior band at Fairhaven High, assisted by Frank Gonsalves, who also took care of the junior band and marching band.
For the next decade, Miss Hastings administered Tripp School, held countless band and orchestra rehearsals, directed concerts and gave private music lessons. For a while she served as president of the Bristol County Music Educators Association. Somehow she made the time to organize Fairhaven’s Girl Scouts and to help found the New Bedford Mental Health Clinic as well. The American Field Service also benefited from her active support. And of course, every Tuesday night in the summer she conducted a band made up of alumni and students at public concerts in Cushman Park.
Easily recognized by Fairhavenites from her appearances in front of orchestras, in her blue dress and string of pearls, or from her many marches down Main Street in her band uniform, Elizabeth Hastings also made another lasting impression, recalled by all who knew her. Until very late in life, she never drove an automobile. She bicycled everywhere, even to work, where she would prop up her bike near the front of the school along with the bicycles of her students.
When construction of the new junior high school was nearing completion in 1958, Elizabeth I. Hastings, at the age of sixty, was named to become its first principal. Always keeping herself up-to-date on the latest educational trends, Miss Hastings welcomed some of the changes going on in the schools during the 1960s. When she had begun teaching, “It was all lockstep and silence in the ’20s,” she told a newspaper reporter, but now more freedom of expression and openness prevailed. Still, she held the line in some areas. George Graves, who served on the school committee during Miss Hastings’ time at the junior high, recently recalled, “She was a stern disciplinarian. She had complete charge of her school.”
Two things she required were that the boys’ hair be short and the girls’ skirts be long. A former junior high school employee tells how Miss Hastings kept a bag of old, long skirts in a closet in the office. If a girl came to school with a skirt that was deemed too short, Miss Hastings would pull out the bag and make the offender wear a long ugly skirt for the rest of the day. Then there’s another story of how the principal took care of a boy who wouldn’t cut his Beatle-like hair. After getting permission from the boy’s mother, Miss Hastings enlisted the services of the neighborhood barber to cut the student’s hair in the school office. She also had to get two teachers and two police officers into the office to hold the boy down while the locks were shorn.
Miss Hastings encouraged studious behavior, creative talents and civic duty, and she felt strongly about paying attention to the needs of all students, not just a select few. She was well aware of the fact that a great many of the top performers would end up pursuing lucrative careers far away from home. She criticized the idea of “classical high schools designed to fit students for college,” especially in a predominantly blue-collar town like Fairhaven. “We should think of the sixty percent of the students who don’t go beyond high school,” she said in the late 1960s. “America was built by the average person and these are the students who will stay with us in town.”
Though she had to retire in 1968, Elizabeth Hastings didn’t set aside her interest in education. Though busy as a director of the Fairhaven Improvement Association, devoting time to the newly incorporated Fairhaven Historical Society, she decided to run for a seat on the school committee.
In 1970, Miss Hastings received 1,868 votes to take an open seat on the school committee. Incumbent Peter F. Barcellos kept his own seat with 1,625 votes. Two other candidates got a total of just three votes, showing it’s not easy to run against a candidate who has a school named after her. Three years later the winning tallies were: Elizabeth I. Hastings 2,268 and Peter F. Barcellos 1,694. Challenger Peter London got 1,500 votes. In both 1976 and 1979, Miss Hastings and Mr. Barcellos ran unopposed.
During her last term, budget slashing as a result of Proposition 2 1/2 greatly upset Miss Hastings. Unwilling to see cuts to programs, she considered resigning from the committee, but was persuaded to remain in office until the end of her term. She did not seek re-election in 1982.
In the two decades that followed her retirement, Miss Hastings not only served twelve years on the school committee, but was also president of the Fairhaven Improvement Association (1972-73), was a member of the Fairhaven Historical Commission and sat on the Moby Dick Trail Committee. In 1979, she was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass Dartmouth). The Fairhaven Improvement Association honored Miss Hastings with its first testimonial dinner, held in 1979. Awards and honors were bestowed on her by many organizations.
One informal honor, which probably touched her heart more than all the others, took place each Memorial Day when the marching band would pause in front of her home at 210 Main Street to perform a musical selection for her. The sounds of Fairhaven students making music, both at home and elsewhere in the world, provided her with a great sense of accomplishment.
Elizabeth I. Hastings last heard a musical performance by Fairhaven school children on December 7, 1989, at Nichols House Nursing Home, where she had lived since the fall of that year. A bell choir from Oxford School went to the nursing home to play Christmas songs. Miss Hastings was brought from her room and listened to the short concert. Less than a week later, on December 13, Elizabeth I. Hastings died at the age of 91.
Her memory is still in the minds of thousands of who lived in town during her time. Some remember her as a teacher, a principal, a colleague or a leader in the development of instrumental music in and out of the schools. Others recall her as community spirited woman promoting history and civic pride. There are those who can still picture Miss Hastings in her perennial place at the head table during high school “Pops” concerts. And many remember her standing on the front steps of 210 Main Street listening to the bands playing during parades.
More than a decade after her death, each year on Memorial Day, the marching band still paused in front of Miss Hastings’ house to play for her.
—Thanks goes to several people who helped contribute to this story in one way or another. They are George Graves, Natalie S. Hemingway, Elaine Marshall, Leonard Pierce, Mary Jane Richard and others who shared thoughts and memories. Thanks also to Debbie Charpentier for making Millicent Library archives material available for my research when our schedules did not coincide.
COPYRIGHT 2002, 2024 by Christopher J. Richard. All Rights Reserved. Slightly updated from the article first published in Fairhaven’s Monthly Navigator in March 2002.
Chris, you did Miss Hastings, as we called her, justice with this story about her life. Thank you. And who's next?