Jewell Cutler (1965)
CUTLER, THOMPSON
Posted By: Pat Hochstetler (email)
Date: 2/28/2013 at 09:18:34
Des Moines Tribune – Des Moines, Iowa
Thursday, May 13, 1965 pg 6Miss Cutler Rites Set
Services for Jewel Cutler, 92, first teacher of an “open air” school for handicapped children here that was a forerunner of Des Moines Smouse Opportunity School, will be at 9 a.m. Saturday at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in West Des Moines.
Burial will be in the cemetery of St. Patrick’s Church in the old Irish Settlement near Cumming, where Miss Cutler was born.
Miss Cutler died Wednesday at the Bishop Drumm Home for the Aged, where she had been a resident five years. Several weeks ago she got pneumonia and was taken to Mercy Hospital. She had rallied from this illness and was returned to the Drumm Home Monday.
The rosary will be said at 8 p.m. Friday at the McLaren’s Funeral Home in West Des Moines.
A quiet woman, dedicated to helping the handicapped children she taught, Miss Cutler in 1930 was nominated for the Des Moines Community Tribune Award.
She was brought to Des Moines as a young girl to live with relatives while she attended the old East Side Sister’s School. As a young woman she homesteaded for a year in South Dakota and taught at a country school during that time.
In 1896, she returned here and joined the Des Moines public school system teaching first at old Cooper School, then Elmwood, Crocker, Bird and Grant elementary schools.
In 1914, she became teacher of an open air school in a small building purchased by the school board next to old North High School.
The former superintendent of schools, John W. Studebaker, at one time sent her east to study and observe other open air schools.
When Smouse school was opened in 1931, Miss Cutler, in spite of a 90 per cent hearing loss herself, became its vice-principal and served until her retirement in 1944.
Less than six months after retirement, Miss Cutler was back at work at the Levey school southeast of Des Moines, where she taught 15 children in nine grades. She continued at this job during the war time teacher shortage for five years.
During her early teaching years, Miss Cutler continued her education, obtaining a degree from Columbia University in New York, N.Y. She was a life member of the National Education Association and the Iowa State Education Association.
She was a charter member of the Catholic Women’s League; a member of the Rosary Society of Sacred Heart Church, and the Loretto Guild.
Eight nephews and nieces survive, including Mrs. Anna Thompson, 433 Ninth St., West Des Moines, with whom Miss Cutler lived 12 years before going to the Drumm Home.
Gravestone Photo
Madison Obituaries maintained by Linda Griffith Smith.
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