Sister Dolores Crosby’s mighty influence on children was most apparent when she was out in public.
Mary Pointon has seen it.
The Snohomish woman became friends with Crosby during the nun’s years as principal of Immaculate Conception/Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Everett. Her son Collin Pointon was a student there.
After Crosby’s retirement, Mary Pointon would take her friend out to lunch.
“Every place we went, all around Puget Sound, someone would walk up to her and say, ‘Sister Dolores?’ She would always know their names,” Pointon said.
When Helen Dolores Crosby died July 22 at the Convent of the Holy Names in Spokane, she left a living legacy. She helped educate thousands of students in Catholic schools across the state. Two of my kids carry lessons she taught at Immaculate, where she was principal from 1992 to 1999.
In a career spanning 43 years, she spent 21 years before coming to Everett as principal at Seattle’s Our Lady of the Lake School. In Edmonds, she taught eighth grade at Holy Rosary School from 1973 until 1978.
Earlier, she taught in her native Spokane. There, she grew up with a stellar surname and a famous uncle, Bing Crosby. Her father, Edward “Ted” Crosby, was the crooner’s older brother.
For one Immaculate school auction, she donated a picture of herself and her twin, Catherine “Katie” Crosby, at age 4 playing horse by riding on Uncle Bing’s back.
Crosby, 73, was valedictorian at graduation from Spokane’s Holy Names Academy in 1952. She entered the Marylhurst Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Names in Oregon, taking vows in 1954. She earned her teaching degree at Marylhurst University, and a master’s degree in education from Eastern Washington University.
Interviewed when she retired in 1999, Crosby said her favorite childhood pastime was playing school. Her mother was a high school teacher. “With our mother’s old grade books, we gave all the kids we liked A’s, and all we didn’t F’s,” said Crosby, always quick with the wisecracks.
Mary Hupf, director of religious education at Holy Rosary Church, taught with Crosby in Edmonds. Crosby – close friends used her nickname, Dixie – lived in a convent at Holy Rosary at the time.
“She’d say that all the nuns went to bed at 8 o’clock. We used to hang out,” said Hupf, who’ll deliver a eulogy for Crosby at a memorial service at 11 a.m. Saturday at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Seattle.
To prepare for her talk, Hupf contacted Crosby’s twin, Katie Ferguson of Richland. “Katie told me that her sister always followed the rules, but she had her own interpretation of the law,” Hupf said. “Once, as a novice in the convent, it was her turn to bake cookies. The rule was one cookie per person. Dixie obeyed, but each cookie was the size of a salad plate.”
She was such a loyal baseball fan that the Mariner Moose paid her a visit when the cancer she suffered near the end of her life kept her from the ballpark.
Underneath a constant smile and sense of fun was a stickler for basic education, from grammar rules to drilled-in math facts. Crosby was fiercely competitive, as students she coached for regional speech tournaments learned.
“She was strongly involved with literacy,” said Mary Pointon, whose son Collin won a speech contest the first time he competed in seventh grade.
A 2007 graduate of Seattle Preparatory School, Collin Pointon starts college this fall at Chapman University in California. “She planted that seed of literacy,” his mother said.
My daughter, too, was one of Crosby’s speech kids. Crosby would have been nearly as proud as I’ll be when my daughter finishes law school next spring.
“She was not always the favorite teacher of kids at the time,” Hupf said. “It was only when they got into high school and college, they were so prepared. She taught a lot of life lessons people still carry with them today.”
By that measure, she was a powerful woman.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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