There are teachers held in esteem even by students who were never in their classes. Such for me is the case with one teacher who was on staff when I was a student at Horace Maynard High School.
I’m sure throughout the years of her service she oversaw many study halls, and I’m pretty sure she taught some computer classes which could have enrolled both boys and girls. Throughout her career, she possibly taught classes of which I am unaware. The main class I knew her to teach is one I know many males would have liked to have had on their schedules, but that was not allowable.
That was because Ms. Patsy Miller Baker’s primary teaching role was as the girls’ physical education teacher.
Though I never had Ms. Baker as a teacher for any class, I held her in high respect. I admit to being afraid of her when I was a high school student. She had what I will call the stern “teacher look”. I never heard of Ms. Baker having discipline problems.
For many years, the gym at Horace Maynard High (currently serving its last year as a middle school) was divided in half by a tremendous canvas-looking curtain. P.E. for the boys was on one end of the gym, and the girls P.E. was on the other side of the curtain. There were times when some of the boys would take a break from their strenuous physical activity to sit on top of the bleachers and pull back the curtain to gaze longingly at the girls as they participated in gym class. And there were times the boys were told to scram.
I don’t recall many, if any, instances of the girls watching the guys.
When I was a high school student, the entrances to the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms were on opposite ends of the building; however, the locker room actually were right next to each other, separated by a cinder block wall. I had boy’s P.E. as both an eighth grader and freshman between fall 1978 and spring 1980. At some point during that time, some of the boys climbed onto the shelving attached to the dividing wall and raised the suspended ceiling tiles. To their delight, the concrete wall only extended perhaps one cinder block above the drop ceiling, and the boys were able to raise a ceiling tile on each side and look into the girls’ locker room. Of course they got caught! I hope what the guys saw was a great enough reward for the chaos that broke out when the girls told Ms. Baker what the boys were doing, and she in turn told the boys’ teacher.
Patsy Miller Baker was a member of the Horace Maynard High School Class of 1961. After graduation, she attended Lincoln Memorial University from 1961-1962, then transferred to the University of Tennessee, returning to Lincoln Memorial University to graduate with her Bachelor’s degree on August 25, 1965. She began her teaching career at her alma mater in fall 1965 and remained there until her retirement.
Ms. Baker is the type of person to me who still commands respect. I could no more call her “Pat” than I can call Ms. Carolyn J. Murr “Carolyn”. Only after her retirement was I privileged to know her aside from her career. I now call her “Miss Pat”.
I don’t know exactly when it was, but I remember the day Ms. Baker came into the front lobby of the Central Office and announced she was there to “put in her papers”.
I was amazed. It seems to me the teachers who taught at schools I attended were somehow “carved in stone” there. It’s the same feeling little kids get when they see their teachers in public and are amazed they exist outside of school.
Ms. Baker said she knew one day she would wake up and know it was the day she was going to retire. And that day had come.
I think of Ms. Pat every day. I have not yet cashed in my retirement card, but I have arrived at the comfortable place I can retire when I choose. Every morning, I wake and think, “Do I want to retire today?” So far, the answer has been, “Not yet.”
I see Miss Pat occasionally, most often at the Union County Historical and Genealogical Museum where she serves as volunteer.
My wish for Ms. Baker, which so far has been granted, is my wish for all retired educators—may she live a long, healthy life, so long that she draws double the amount she paid throughout her working years into Social Security and retirement.

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 88
How did the mathematician feel about negative numbers? (ANSWER: He’d stop at “nothing” to avoid them.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 89
They told me running would help my ability to make decisions. What decision did I make while taking my first run? (See the next “Mincey’s Musings” in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.