Elizabeth (Betsy) Zink Struckman PHHS-1972

Steve and I have been married forty-seven years. We have spent our lives restoring old houses and rescuing animals. Ours has been a simple, chaotic, busy life together.

I retired a couple of years ago after 37 years of teaching English, ten at Beavercreek, ten at Bridgetown Jr. High, and the rest at Oak Hills High School in Cincinnati. I left my students with a heavy heart but ready for a new chapter of my life.

I don't have a story, but I have had a long memory of my seventh-grade English teacher, Mary Lou Andes, at Central school, who modeled everything I loved and respected in a teacher and a human being. She influenced me as a person and as a teacher to be kind and fair and to embrace teaching with a sense of humor. She made me feel important every day (we were "Andes' Angels"), a choice that I tried to emulate with my students, and, in exchange, I loved teaching and the students who crossed the threshold into my classroom. I never forgot her.