Ex-teacher revered for skills, demeanor

5/20/2004

FINDLAY - Evelyn L. Veitch, 85, an English teacher in northwest Ohio schools who taught junior high students for much of her 31-year career, died yesterday in Blanchard Valley Regional Health System from complications of congestive heart failure.

She and her husband, Robert, lived for many years in Bloomdale, Ohio. They moved last summer to Grand Court Findlay, a retirement and assisted-living community.

Mrs. Veitch retired in 1980 from the then-Central Junior High School, where she taught seventh and eighth-grade English for nearly 20 years.

"She liked kids, and she liked to help them learn," her daughter Fran Williams said. "She was a very good teacher. She was very strict, but loving too."

Earlier, she taught at Glenwood School in Findlay, then a junior high.

"She knew her subjects very well, and she seemed to have good control of the children she worked with," said Erma Shrider, a colleague who taught with Mrs. Veitch in the Bloomdale school system. She began her career in Hamler and Deshler, Ohio, schools.

She grew up on a farm near Deshler. She was a graduate of McComb High School and Bowling Green State University.

Mrs. Veitch liked to golf, and she was a member of Trinity United Methodist Church, Bloomdale.

Surviving are her husband, Robert, whom she married Oct. 17, 1942; son, William Veitch; daughters, Susan McDermott and Frances Williams, and four grandchildren.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday in the Routson Funeral Chapel, Findlay, where the body will be after 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The family suggests tributes to the American Heart Association.