School and Community Summer 2024

2001

The Legacy of Everett Keith Sept. 1, 1906 - April 12, 2001 “ M r. Education” passed away this spring, but his contributions to the state and to MSTA will live on. He didn’t look like a giant.

a period of turmoil and change in Missouri education. The MSTA executive secretary in 1941, teachers were accorded respect but little else. Pay was low and retirement provisions nonexistent; education funding relied on the year-to-year goodwill of the General Assembly. Everett Keith set about to change all that. He tackled retirement first. Of the then-48 states, only Missouri and Idaho didn’t have a teacher retirement system. MSTA formed a coalition of all the education groups in the state, including higher education, and pushed for a system that after four years of tough lobbying and late-night phone calls became law. Everett Keith had established a method of operation that would produce results for the rest of his life. A consummate lobbyist, he knew thousands of people by name, and his personal style guaranteed that they would remember him, too. ... It had to help, though, that he had a politician’s instincts when it came to reading human nature. In his interview with the State Historical Society, he likened lobbying to a friendly game of poker. “I can tell more about a guy around the poker table than anyplace else,” he said. “I’ve fooled with [counting votes] for 38 years, and I never asked anybody how they were going to vote. ... It’s just like playing penny ante—if you can’t read the guys around you, you’ll have trouble.” Everett Keith retired from MSTA in 1972. A few months later, NEA disaffiliated the state association from the national organization. ... A man like Mr. Keith wasn’t likely to retire quietly to an armchair and relive his glory days. Instead, he became an advocate for retirement issues and a source of advice and information for education leaders. Ron Crain, the executive director of the Retired Teachers Association of Missouri, credits Mr. Keith for establishing a cost-of-living adjustment for retired teachers. Everett Keith continued to serve education in his final years. “Even though his body was frail, his mind was sharp,” Grain said. “He would give advice in a gentle way if you asked for it, but he would never tell you what to do.” Everett Keith continued to gather awards and accolades. In 1994, at age 88, he was appointed by Gov. Mel Carnahan to serve as a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging. And in 1998, the University of Missouri awarded him an honorary doctorate. “Mr. Education” was now “Dr. Education.” ... First and always, Everett Keith was an ardent supporter of public education. “Free public schools for all children and youth is the unique contribution of our nation to civilization,” he wrote in the conclusion of his book, In Retrospect. “It has been the one unifying influence in our country.” Everett Keith’s accomplishments may dim with time, but he will never be forgotten. MSTA named its conference room in his honor - a fitting memorial to a man who had spent so many hours there crafting education laws and programs.

Everett Keith was slight in stature and soft-spoken, but his influence on Missouri education was towering. MSTA Executive Director Kent King calls him the most influential and powerful man you “never met.” “He didn’t seek a place in history,” King said. “History made a place for him. His legacy is so big, it cannot be ignored.” What is that legacy? Mr. Keith has been called the architect of the modern education system in this state. He was the force behind many of the structures and organizations that exist today. The Public School Retirement System, the State Board of Education, the education section in the 1945 state constitution and the Teacher Tenure Act are but a few of the foundations he helped establish. Mr. Keith died in Columbia on April 12 after a brief illness; he was 94. The early years Born in 1906 to William A. and Nora Woods Keith, Everett Keith grew up on a farm along the Niangua River in Dallas County. For several years, his older sister was his teacher in a one room school. He went to high school in Buffalo, Mo., and then enrolled in the pre-law program in Springfield. However, his seriousness of purpose didn’t dampen a fun-loving spirit. Retired teacher Mildred Leaver recalls the first time she met Everett Keith. It was September 1925, and they were both in their first week of college at what was then the Springfield Teachers College. He was taking an agriculture class; she was enrolled in home economics. “If you took those two subjects,” Leaver said, “you could belong to the Country Life Club. We square danced on Saturday nights in the gym. He later joked that we used to belong to the Wild Life Club.” After Mr. Keith attended college “two summers and a winter,” the Buffalo Board of Education approached him about taking a teaching job. “I went back to Buffalo and taught 64 fifth and sixth graders that had had trouble with the previous teacher,” he said in a 1996 interview with the State Historical Society, “but they were the most lovely children I ever saw. I still think of them with a lot of glow.” He rose quickly to the position of superintendent of Buffalo schools in 1933. A dapper dresser, he wore dark suits, and the children called him “professor.” That same year he married Anna Catherine Blanchard and accepted a scholarship to the University of Missouri. The events marked a turning point in his life. Mr. Keith already held a bachelor’s degree in education, and at the University of Missouri, he earned a master’s. He soon was tapped for a job at the State Department of Education. In 1938, he began working for MSTA as director of public relations, and in 1941 he became executive secretary. It was a post he would hold for more than 30 years during

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