By Mary Owen
Lourdes Public Charter School is losing a champion.
“DeAnne Sumpter has been a positive influence in the lives of thousands of students,” said Sue Gerding, who has been Sumpter’s co-teacher for the past six years at the Scio school. Before that, Gerding worked with Sumpter as a volunteer and teaching assistant.
Gerding called Sumpter, who retired in June after 45 years of teaching, “an incredible co-worker, mentor and friend for me, as well as for the rest of the staff and parents.”
Sumpter hadn’t intended to be a teacher when she first sought higher education.
“I wanted to go to UCLA and become a psychologist,” she said. “I went to live with a close friend of mine in California for awhile and got a job in a bank.”
Returning to Oregon, Sumpter realized teaching was in her future and graduated from Marylhurst University in Lake Oswego in the education field. She has been teaching since 1963.
“I found out I loved it,” she said.
In 1967, she returned to California to teach at a new experimental school in Hawaiian Gardens. The school had open classrooms for kindergarten through third grade and a principal with a vision for education.
“The school got named one of the best 10 schools in the nation by Good Housekeeping,” Sumpter said.
Two years later, she moved to Orange County, teaching there for a number of years. She became a reading specialist and resource teacher for primary children and she trained numerous teaching assistants.
“We were a team,” she said of her cadre of mostly moms. “Their enthusiasm was so great.”
In 1981, Sumpter returned to Oregon, teaching for the next six years at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Stayton before taking on students at Lourdes, formerly Our Lady of Lourdes before becoming a charter school almost a decade ago and merging with the Scio School District.
Sumpter’s strong points included her ability to quickly identify the students’ strengths and weaknesses, adapting the learning environment to facilitate their maximum growth potential, Gerding said.
“I always tried to let my students know I supported them,” Sumpter said. “They could always come to me and get help.”
Sumpter said she would miss teaching.
“It has been my life,” she said. “I’ve been so fortunate to be able to teach children. Just building their confidence, letting them know I believed in them, expecting the very best – which they arose to.”
Sumpter plans to use her free time traveling to South Dakota to visit friends as well as relax and read a few of the books she has not had time to read before.
“I also plan to volunteer at the Humane Society,” she said. Her late husband, Ray, who died in December, was a space engineer for Rockwell and worked on the Apollo program. He inspired Sumpter’s love of animals by adopting cats, dogs and sometimes cows, she said.
“He would scatter bird seed around the half-mile trail on our property on Kingston-Jordan Road,” she said.
A good chunk of her free time, however, will remain at Lourdes School.
“I’m going to go back and help some of the kids I know who need that extra boost,” she said.
