Women's History Month: Mary Willard
Mary Willard’s influence as a teacher at Jamestown High School is perhaps best noted in one of her star pupils: future Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson. Willard, a longtime English teacher at Jamestown High School at the turn of the 20th century, was known for her instilling within her students an appreciation for classic literature and oratory, as well as her dedication to the school community at large.
Jackson, one of the Supreme Court’s greatest writers, credited Willard for teaching him that the “written word is the threshold of knowledge, and ability to write simple direct English is the beginning of power.”
Willard also was the driving force behind raising three years’ worth of fundraising for the school district to purchase and save the Hundred Acre Lot in 1916, organizing pageants and festivals to help raise the $8,250 needed. The forest became one of the first school parks in the United States and was donated to SUNY JCC upon its founding in 1950.
Willard passed away in 1931. The Robert H. Jackson Center paid tribute to her life with an exhibit entitled “Say I Taught Thee” in 2015.