Helen Fearn


 Teacher

Born:Feburary 23, 1911
Died:September 1979

Notes:

•  Wife of a black dentist in Huntsville, named Dr. Henry Fearn. - Hereford

•  Dr. Sonnie Willington Hereford III mentions Mrs. Helen Fearn several times. She was a great teacher for him. - Hereford

•  "Mrs. Fearn, who'd been my first-grade teacher, taught me math in the seventh grade, and I loved math, and I loved to please her, and she was so supportive of me. When I got to the ninth grade, Mrs. Fearn also taught biology, and boy, that was really good, because she was good in biology, and I loved biology because I wanted to know how things lived by me being on the farm, you know. At home, I even rigged up an outdoor aquarium of sorts, with tadpoles and frogs and all that business, and I used to mount insects and leaves and things like that from trees and try to name the leaf according to the shape... One thing that inspired me. We had a picture of George Washington Carver at the school, and I admired it so, and this Mrs. Fearn, she said, 'Do you really, really like that picture?' I said yes. She said, 'Why don't you take it home then?' So she let me take George Washington Carver's picture home." - Hereford

•  Dr. and Mrs. H. C. Fearn (of 418 Oak Ave.) both served on the Dulcina DeBerry Branch Library Board of Directors. - Torrence

•  Mrs. Helen Fearn's name was mentioned as a teacher in a section of the book talking about an initiative for continuing education for Veterans after WWII. - Torrence

•  Dr. Cashin joining the military as a dentist and enjoyed the freedoms felt in European countries. But, the Civil Rights movement was heating up in Alabama, and he decided to come home to support the cause. "Within two weeks of returning to Huntsville, he started a voter registration drive. He was ready to get to work on his mission. Mrs. Fearn, a neighbor who was the principal of Councill High and a convenient emissary for the white establishment, had warned him, 'John, you're doing something dangerous. Be careful, I don't want you to get hurt.'" This reference to Mrs. Fearn was part of a larger story, but it is also an example of Mrs. Fearn's protective nature. - Cashin


Related Links:

•  Cashin - The Agitator's Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African American Family, by Sheryll Cashin, © 2008, page 123.

•  Hereford - Beside the Troubled Waters: A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama Town, by Sonnie Wellington Hereford III and Jack D. Ellis, 2001, pages 20-21, 23, 31.

•  Social Security Index - This version of the Index can be viewed only with an Ancestry.com paid subscription. (Originally found at http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?ti=0&indiv=try&db=ssdi&h=18774552.)

•  Torrence - Dulcina DeBerry: Door Opener, by Missouri L. Torrence, 1996, pages 92, 93, 100.