Teaching until 94: How a CEHD alumna defined a lifetime of service to children
For CEHD graduate Berniece Hinkie, teaching was a calling
CEHD graduate Berniece Hinkie began her teaching service at age 14 and finished at age 94. That’s exactly 80 years of helping children learn.
In the late 1930s and early 40s in southern Minnesota, there were no school buses into town. Students walked, sometimes in 20 degrees below zero weather, through the snowbanks to get to one-room schools located in rural areas.
Hinkie naturally began helping the younger students learn as she learned her lessons in her one-room in Rice County near Medford, Minnesota. Her teacher noticed her passion and effectiveness and asked her to help the other students progress.
Imagine being a teacher having to teach students from first through eighth grade all in the same room at the same time. That was the beginning of Hinkie’s teaching passion and career.
The only way for Hinkie to continue her education in high school was to leave her parents on their rural farm during the week and live with a Lutheran minister and his wife in the town of Medford, population 325. It was simply not practical for her parents who farmed with draft horses and no motorized vehicles to drive her in the morning and afternoon in a horse and buggy 20 miles to and from school.
Hinkie completed her high school education in Medford and, with some practical work experience locally, she moved to Minneapolis and became a bank teller. Her high school boyfriend of four years refused to join the Army, which deeply disappointed her as World War II was just beginning. He would not leave his parents’ farm and Hinkie, as a teaching volunteer in church and at school, was not about to let go of her teaching passion.
On a blind date in Minneapolis organized by her friend, she met Russ. Even though he was partially disabled with a fused elbow from a childhood illness, he was committed to serve. He joined the United States Merchant Marines and was transferred to Great Neck, New York. Their romance continued and they were married on a weekend pass, after which she moved to New York. Her dream of being a teacher depended on her ability to go to college. In the midst of the war and all of the worldwide chaos, college was not an option. However, she volunteered to help teach the children at the military base.
At the end of the war, Russ and Hinkie moved back to Minnesota and lived in Minneapolis. Russ returned to his work as an accountant at Cargill and Hinkie became the mother of their first son.
To raise money to go to college, Hinkie created a licensed daycare where she could earn money as well as continue to teach kids while helping other mothers and fathers raise their kids while working. Instead of playtime all day, she had the children focus on learning.
A transfer to Peoria, Illinois, provided the opportunity for Hinkie to attend Bradley University in the evening after working all day at a department store.
Because of the tremendous number of children born after World War II, now known as the Baby Boomer generation, a teacher only needed two years of college to get a teaching license. Hinkie taught in Pekin, Illinois, until 1960 when she and Russ were transferred by Cargill back to Minnesota. She used her Illinois teaching experience to be able to teach in the Bloomington Minnesota School District. While teaching there, she attended CEHD and graduated with a full bachelor’s degree. She became teacher of the year in Bloomington and used its teacher education system to earn her master’s degree at Macalester College. Her teaching career in Bloomington continued until she retired. While no longer teaching formally, she continued to teach through her church and in her community. Eventually Russ died and she moved to be with her eldest son in Payson, Arizona.
Hinkie’s call to be a teacher continued and she was teaching immigrant c h i ld re n t h rou g h he r church just 10 days before she died on Christmas Eve 2019 at age 94. Her lifelong passion led to her 80-year service to others by helping them learn. There is a bench in the children’s play yard at her church with the inscription “Gramma Bea’s.”
For Berniece Norma Hinkie (Albrecht), teaching was never just a job or even a career, it was a calling. Lovingly, her sons Richard and Mark and their families pass this legacy on to honor their mother, but also all teachers everywhere, including those in their family: sister-in-law Linda Hinkie and daughter-in-law Erica Gardner Hinkie.
–Richard Hinkie
Photos courtesy of Hinkie Family
Big smile as the hat was purchased for her by a former student who recognized her and remembered her helping him in his junior high years.