After the morning greetings and announcements, the soft-spoken teacher would stride to her large white wicker chair as her second-grade charges gathered on the floor around her.
It was time for their morning talk. Coe LaJeaune McIntire encouraged her students to research a topic about their world or everyday lives, stand up before the class and talk about it. Talk, not read. At most, use guide words on index cards as reminders. It was their moment to stand before the class and do a little teaching of their own.
McIntire retired more than 30 years ago, but former students and their parents still credit the morning talks with giving students confidence and presentation skills that prepared them for success in life.
“As a teacher, she was quiet and gentle. She had respect for all the students,” recalls Jeanette Tieman, whose daughter, Beth, was in McIntire’s second-grade class in the late 1970s at Briar Vista Elementary School in DeKalb County.
“My daughter was shy and quiet. Mrs. McIntire brought her out of her shell. When I would volunteer in her class, it was so much fun that I wished I was back in second grade.”
Tieman said she kept in touch with McIntire during the past 30 years. In a nursing home, she would find her still turning the well-worn pages of a scrapbook with letters, pictures, and drawings from parents and former students. “She loved teaching. She’d have that book in front of her. It was falling apart, but she was still turning the pages,” Tieman said. “She thoroughly enjoyed it for the rest of her life.”
“Her teaching style was ahead of her time,” said her daughter Janice Shackleton of Atlanta. “She believed in experiential learning. You walked into the classroom and it was like you were in a different place.” She used plants, animals, terrariums and aquariums to inspire students to appreciate nature, Shackleton said. To study metamorphosis, students raised butterflies from larvae and took them outside to set them free. Then they learned to spell it to earn bonus points on the spelling test. They also learned to churn cream to make butter.
“She always had a live animal around. She made it a big deal to help kids understand the whole process,” said her son Thomas Kennedy “Ken” McIntire of Newborn, Ga.
Coe LaJeaune McIntire of Atlanta died Feb. 27 of a stroke at the Safe Haven Personal Care Home, with family at her bedside. She was 95. A private service will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday at her daughter’s Atlanta home. Her body has been donated to the Emory University School of Medicine.
McIntire was born in 1919 in Viola, a Middle Tennessee town of fewer than 200 residents. She skipped grades and entered college early. By age 19, she had a degree in music and education from Middle Tennessee State Teachers College (now Middle Tennessee State University) in Murfreesboro.
Her first job was teaching grades 1-8 in a one-room schoolhouse. She took side jobs playing the cello and piano to supplement her teacher’s salary, Ken said.
In 1943, she married her college sweetheart, Everette Lee McIntire, and settled in Nashville as he was in the Army headed to serve in World War II.
After the war, her husband began a long career in counseling at the Veterans Administration. That brought them to metro Atlanta. “He counseled veterans. She was a teacher. They worked hard. They were frugal and saved so they could travel the world after retiring,” Ken recalled. “I was happy to see that. They had a blast.”
When not globetrotting on Elderhostel excursions, McIntire loved taking fishing trips with her husband of 65 years. Before his death in 2008, the two shared their love for nature with their grandsons, who they took fishing and bird watching during visits to their Clarks Hill Lake house near Augusta.
“They had a strong devotion to each other. They enjoyed each other. They were partners in their activities,” said her grandson Lane Shackleton of San Francisco. “It’s an example I hope to use in my marriage.”
The donation to Emory was her mom’s way of supporting education in death as in life, Shackleton said. Her father had also donated his body to the medical school. “Like any other decision they made, they made it together. I don’t think it was meant to be some grand or glorious deed. But it fit with the way they did things to serve others,” she said. “Both were service-oriented people. She taught children. He was into counseling and rehabilitation of veterans. This was just another way to serve people.”
In addition to daughter Janice and son Ken, McIntire is survived by her son, Everette Lee McIntire Jr. of Jacksonville, Fla., six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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