Peggy Bredbeck, 1948-2012: Port Clinton teacher helped plan elementary building

12/23/2012

PORT CLINTON — Peggy Bredbeck, a fourth-grade teacher at Port Clinton’s Jefferson Elementary School and a former vice president of the Port Clinton City school board, died Friday in Magruder Hospital, Port Clinton.

She was 64 and suffered a heart attack at home, said her husband of 41 years, John Bredbeck.

Mrs. Bredbeck was a board member and then vice president of the school board in the early 1980s.

Since about 2008, she taught fourth grade at Jefferson Elementary.

She taught there several years in the 1970s, also mainly the fourth grade.

In 1976, she stopped teaching to stay home and raise her children, Mr. Bredbeck said.

Before her return to Jefferson about four years ago, Mrs. Bredbeck had taught from the mid-1980s at Bataan Elementary School, also in Port Clinton.

She had also taught in grade schools in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, where she started in 1971 and worked for a year until moving to Port Clinton.

“She absolutely loved being a teacher, and she put her heart and soul into it,” Mr. Bredbeck said.

“She was extremely dedicated. All summer long, literally every day, she would be working in the basement [at home] where she had an office, working on projects for kids. That was her thing.”

Mrs. Bredbeck was on the planning committee for the new Jefferson Elementary school building, where classes will begin after Christmas break.

“She was in seventh heaven to go there and start organizing,” her husband said.

A Euclid native, Mrs. Bredbeck was born to Marie Wrentmore and Martin V. Frye.

She graduated from Euclid High School in 1966.

She received a bachelor’s degree in science and education from Bowling Green State University in 1970.

She married John Bredbeck in 1971 in Euclid.

The couple then moved to Port Clinton, where Mr. Bredbeck had grown up.

In her free time, Mrs. Bredbeck enjoyed reading, mostly novels.

A lifeguard in high school, she also enjoyed spending her summers at home, swimming in the pool, Mr. Bredbeck said.

She was a past president of Port Clinton Federation of Teachers.

Surviving are her husband, John; sons, Todd and Jeff; daughter, Gretchen Bredbeck; brother, Tom Frye; and four grandchildren.

Visitation is 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Gerner-Wolf-Walker Funeral Home, Port Clinton, where services are to start at 11 a.m. Thursday.

The family suggests tributes to the Port Clinton City Schools scholarship fund.