'Tough' teacher kept track of her former students

4/30/2008

Margaret V. David, 90, an elementary school teacher in Lucas County's former Adams Township and Toledo Public Schools, died Monday in Spring Meadows Senior Community from complications of a stroke.

Mrs. Davis of South Toledo lived at Spring Meadows for five years.

She retired in 1973 from Mount Vernon Elementary School, where she taught for about a decade. Early in her career, she taught for 10 years at Martin Elementary School, Hill Avenue and Holland-Sylvania Road. In between, she taught at several other schools and, throughout, taught all elementary grades.

Most of her career was in Adams Township, which disappeared parcel by parcel through annexation into Toledo. In 1966, township schools were absorbed into the Toledo Public Schools system.

She liked forming students, and she kept track of hers through the rest of their schooling, their careers, their marriages, their lives, said her daughter Vicki Haupricht, who as a student at Rogers High School came in contact with classmates who were taught by her mother.

Whatever their opinion, "they all said she was tough," her daughter said. "She had your attention. She tried to make classes interesting. She wanted to keep them learning. If someone had problems, she would spend extra time with that person to help them achieve the best they could."

Mrs. David grew up on Clarence Avenue in Ironville, the East Toledo neighborhood that was torn down in the 1960s. She was a 1935 graduate of Waite High School.

She went to Bowling Green State University and received a teaching certificate in 1937. She received a bachelor's degree in education from BGSU in 1943.

She liked every kind of book and read and crocheted until a stroke five years ago.

She and her husband, Edwin, married July 29, 1944. He died Aug. 27, 1986.

Surviving are her daughters, Nanette David, Wendy Szempias, and Vicki Haupricht, and four granddaughters.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Friday in the Thomas I. Wisniewski Funeral Home, where the body will be after 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The family suggests tributes to Epiphany Lutheran Church, where she was a member; Ronald McDonald House, or Sunshine Children's Home.