Teacher remembered as devoted to her students

Published 10:03 pm Saturday, October 25, 2008

Decades after Marguerite Snavely retired from teaching, a friend who didn’t know her at Snohomish, Everett or Cascade high schools was witness to her enormous influence.

In helping her move from a mobile home in Snohomish to an assisted living facility in Marysville, Pamela Wilkins found high school yearbooks, envelopes stuffed with photographs and student production programs, and photo albums filled with pictures of choirs, drill teams, school musicals and plays.

In all those hundreds of pictures, only a few show her face.

“Almost all the pictures I found of Snave were of her back. The pictures were of the kids, and all you could see was her back,” said Wilkins, who befriended the retired teacher in her later years.

“You could just feel how much she cared,” said Wilkins. “It’s thousands of people she influenced. She created so much value with her life. It’s impressive.”

Marguerite Belle Snavely died Oct. 10. She was 93.

Embossed in gold lettering on one of her photo albums is the name used by all who knew her — “Snave.”

“She just had the ability to milk the very best out of students, and really get kids to perform way beyond their own expectations,” said Larry O’Donnell. A retired Everett School District administrator, O’Donnell encountered Snavely at Everett High School. He graduated from the school in 1955.

She was born in Walla Walla to Virgil and Evelyn Coplitz Snavely on July 4, 1915. Her father was a car dealer from Ohio, and her mother came from North Dakota. The couple divorced, and Marguerite was raised by her mother in Marysville.

She went to Everett’s Lincoln Grade School and graduated from Everett High School at 16 after taking an accelerated three-year course of study. She got a teaching degree from Washington State University and later earned two master’s degrees. Her training was specialized in public school music.

Her first teaching jobs were in Stevenson and White Salmon. In 1945, she moved to Snohomish. After almost 10 years at Snohomish High School, she came to Everett High School and later taught at Cascade High. Her teaching career spanned 47 years.

Everett High’s yearbooks from the early and mid-1960s are packed with pictures of groups and productions shepherded by Snavely. She was leader of the school’s Seagals drill team and the Chordettes and A Cappella singing groups.

She left her biggest mark with elaborate musical productions, “Brigadoon,” “South Pacific,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “The King and I,” and “Oklahoma!”

“She was a woman who could do anything. She was just revered for her perfection,” said Gary Hatle, a 1962 Everett High graduate who was directed by Snavely in school productions. He remembers being allowed to grow a goatee for his role in “Kiss Me Kate.”

“Her Seagals drill team was huge. They’d go compete and always come home with the top awards,” Hatle said. “With Snave, you didn’t lose.”

Hatle, who’s had a long music career as an accompanist and with the Everett Chorale, considers Snavely a great mentor.

He hopes to start an effort to have a statue of Snavely erected outside Everett’s Civic Auditorium.

“She was abrupt and abrasive, that was just Snave,” said O’Donnell. “She was one of the real Everett School District legends. Anyone exposed to her never forgot her. She was fierce. When she was committed to do something, she did if full bore. She had one speed, that was it.”

She never married and had no children. Wilkins said that above all, she loved her students. She also had close friends, including Wilma Tempero and Ethel Smith.

Wilkins met her long after she retired. She was a customer at Bickford Ford-Mercury in Snohomish, where Wilkins, who now lives in Seattle, once sold cars.

“She loved Mustangs,” said Wilkins, adding that Snavely always wanted a sporty red car with a stick shift. “The last car she wrecked was a Mustang GT. She was 92,” Wilkins said.

Snavely lived independently until the last years of her life. She and Wilkins would often go bowling at the old Tyee Lanes in Everett.

“She was an early riser. She’d drive over to Tyee and bowl. She wrote in her journals, hundreds of journals. She was a fascinating woman,” Wilkins said.

Phil LaGrandeur, a 1968 graduate of Everett High, never had Snavely for a class.

“Even seeing her from a distance, she was quite a fantastic lady,” LaGrandeur said.

“She was a dynamo,” O’Donnell said. “This woman had energy and zeal that exceeded anything I’d ever seen.”

Reporter Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.