NORTH EAST — Leola Downey touched many lives during her 96 years. Just ask those who knew her and all she embodied as a mother, wife, educator and all-around favorite citizen of the town of North East. News of her passing, even as a nonagenarian, was hard for many to accept.
"I think the whole community will be saddened, even though she lived a long life," friend and former Webutuck School Superintendent Myron Rindsberg said. "I knew she was in ill health and I had been over to see her. I hoped that she would have lasted a lot longer, but hey, she was in her mid-90s, and I’ll take that.
"Yet I still found it extremely difficult to prepare for this," he added. "There are so many memories. Not only was she extremely capable, she was a dear friend. She was wonderful, there’s no question about it."
Downey, who was known as "Lee," was born Leola Josephine Morrison in the Adirondack town of Lake Pleasant, N.Y., on Jan. 11, 1912. From there she eventually made her way to Albany State Teachers College, graduating in 1932.
It was in Albany in 1934 that she met Millerton native Violet Simmons, who encouraged her to teach in the small village of Millerton. The move was an important one in her life, as it was in Millerton where she met Augustine Downey, who owned a Mobil gas station at Checkerboard Corner, where Sea Gull Roofing now stands. The pair married in 1939. They spent 58 years together until "Gus" Downey died at the age of 90 in 1997.
The couple had two children, Leo, who now lives in Sedona, Ariz., and Edward, who lives in Millerton. Downey is also survived by two grandchildren, Kyle and Evan Downey, and numerous nieces and nephews.
"I think her intelligence, her sense of self-reliance, her sense of humor, her common sense, practical approach to life and her ability to keep everything in perspective [were character traits I always admired in her]," Edward Downey said. "She was a wonderful spouse and mother and grandmother."
Downey brought those same characteristics to her profession, which was an important part of her identity, according to her son.
"When she was growing up, the options for an ambitious woman were to be a teacher or to be a nurse," Edward Downey said. "Though I think if she were going off to college now and had to decide what to do, I still think she would be a teacher.
"A former student of hers called me last week to ask how she was doing, and he said to me that what he always felt about her was that teaching for her was never a job," he continued. "It was a vocation. The impression he had was that she had a calling to do this."
North East town Supervisor Dave Sherman was a former student of Leola Downey. He remembered her well.
"Leola Downey continues to strike me as a model of a gracious lady who was always outwardly calm, cool and collected. I was sad to hear about her passing," he said. "She was a wonderful lady who first brought history and made it interesting to many of her students. She put us in very good stead for training we further took in high school and beyond."
Former Amenia town Supervisor Janet Reagon, who also ended up teaching history at Webutuck, was another past student of Leola Downey.
"She was extremely good. She was a very good teacher and she was very kind. I think all of my classmates liked her very much," Reagon said. "She made it interesting and fun, and I’m sure her influence, as well as Miss Simmons’, influenced me to major in history and then become a teacher."
"She had an excellent mind — sometimes a mind like a steel trap," Rindsberg said. "I was so fortunate to be able to work with her and see the outcomes firsthand. She knew what she was doing and there were no ifs, ands or buts about it."
"From a student’s perspective, they tended to see her as a very strict teacher, and she had a philosophy that if she held the reigns of discipline tight at first, you could loosen them as the year went on, so they may not have been as familiar with her whimsical side," Edward Downey said. "One of the things that interested me was to see some of her exchanges with her friends and to see her sense of humor. So often her students didn’t see that as much."
After teaching mostly seventh- and eighth-grade history in the Webutuck Central School District for 25 years, Leola Downey retired. She volunteered at the NorthEast-Millerton Library and joined the North East Historical Society. Years later, when she moved to Noble Horizons independent living center in Salisbury, Conn., she volunteered at its library as well.
Her approach to life was best summed up by her son, Edward.
"She was somebody who was serious without being stuffy and at the same time funny without being silly," he said. "She was really a remarkably practical person in the sense that she seemed to deal with her life in a very sensible way.
"I think about how much she appreciated the community and the students she taught, the colleagues she worked with, the people whom, when she retired, would come up to her and remembered her," he added. "When she got older, [I think of] how much that all meant to her."
