by Keith L. Martin | Staff Writer
Gayle Brown, principal of Rock Creek School in Frederick, calls the gymnasium of the 36-year-old school ‘‘the heart” of the building, where celebrations, ceremonies and school-wide gatherings bring everyone together.
It is fitting then that come Saturday at 1 p.m., this part of the school will be named in honor of the late Doris D. Remsberg, the school’s first principal and a longtime supporter of children with disabilities.
‘‘I think Doris Remsberg was a role model as an advocate for children with special needs in Frederick County,” said Brown, the school’s principal since 2005. ‘‘...And her legacy is still going on.”
Remsberg, a native of Woodsboro, was an educator in Frederick County for 43 years, starting in Woodsboro and Thurmont elementary schools, then onto pupil personnel. In 1958, she became the first principal at the Harmony Grove School, which later became Rock Creek School, until her retirement in 1993.
She was also instrumental in establishing several community facilities, including the Jeanne Bussard Training Workshop and Scott Key Center, to help young people with disabilities after their schooling was complete. Remsberg died in 2007 at the age of 78.
The effort to name the gymnasium in Remsberg’s honor was spearheaded by former Frederick County Board of Education member Earlene Thornton, former county teacher and administrator Al Pansa, and former teacher and longtime Remsberg friend, Peggy Trimmer.
In February, the Board of Education unanimously approved the renaming.
Thornton, of Jug Bridge, knew Remsberg through the Delta Kappa Gamma society for women educators, and in the 1970s, visited Rock Creek as she worked on her doctorate in education at George Washington University. ‘‘...I call her a crusader. Many people did not see special education as something of substance, but she was truly a visionary,” she said.
Pansa came to Harmony Grove in 1961, when it was located in an old mansion on Hayward Road, supervising a classroom of 10 boys. The goal of the school, he said, was to create productive citizens at a time when there were no special education services and many children with disabilities lived in institutions. He would later serve as assistant principal at Rock Creek, retiring in 1992.
‘‘She was a pioneer in special education,” said Pansa of Frederick. ‘‘[Remsberg] was willing to share all the information she had with other educators and traveled the state with that knowledge. ... Today, everything is about mainstreaming, but Doris Remsberg was way ahead of her time, working with Waverley Elementary School as a transition point before kids could get back to their home school.”
Tina Baker, a former Rock Creek teacher called Remsberg ‘‘a tough taskmaster,” but all in the name of helping children succeed. In the 1960s, she and Remsberg worked one summer at the Laurel Training School, an institution for children with disabilities, a moving experience for both of them. ‘‘After that, we worked harder, so kids could stay in the community and not go to a place like this,” Baker said. ‘‘We wanted them to function with their families in their communities.
Trimmer met Remsberg in a classroom as well — hers. Remsberg, a senior at Walkersville High School, taught Trimmer’s fifth-grade class during World War II, and the two would go on to be friends and colleagues in the Gamma society.
‘‘What really impresses me is that [the students] were ‘her children,” said Trimmer of Woodsboro. ‘‘Those boys and girls graduated, but still called her or if they were in trouble, reached out to her and she was always there.”
