Julia Hartwell was a teacher at Hazelwood Central High School for 17 years. This was after teaching business classes for 20 years.

"I thought she looked familiar," says Mistee Baalmann, activities director at Village North. "Then I heard Marcia Keith talking about how she was her shorthand teacher at Hazelwood Central. It all came together and I realized she was my shorthand teacher too. She was the same then as she is now -- soft-spoken and polite."

Sue Wagy, activities and restorative assistant, also counts Hartwell as one of her teachers. "She was one of those teachers where no one misbehaved in her class. I remember her class by how especially quiet it was."

Residents Olive Kite and Nellie Browning both taught in Normandy High School, Kite teaching English literature and humanities, and Browning teaching English and history. In fact, Browning did her student teaching with Kite.

Mary Fairbanks began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Minnesota and then worked at a variety of Catholic schools in the area. Her husband George Fairbanks also was a teacher -- four years of high school in Livingston, Illinois.

Elsie Steiner spent 35 years working in schools, most recently in Jefferson City, Missouri -- half of the time as a librarian.

Many of the teachers still meet regularly with their students. Julia Hartwell catches up every year with her first class of high school students from Tamaroa, Illinois, that graduated in 1950. Olive Kite meets every three months with the class of 1944 from Notre Dame High School in south St. Louis, Missouri. In 1989, she and "her girls" took a cruise together.

While school might be out for the former teachers at Village North, they give the retirement community high marks.

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