Ida Ruth (Price) Gulliver

Ida Ruth (Price) Gulliver – Pioneering Piedmont Teacher

The following article by Mona Ridder appeared in the October 6, 2018 edition of the Cumberland Times-News

PIEDMONT, W.Va. — It was the 1957-58 school year and a young teacher had come to Keyser to teach seventh- and eighth-graders. She had transferred from Piedmont after the closure of the all-black Howard High School, where she had previously taught.

Ida Ruth (Price) Gulliver, now 92, was paid tribute by the community of Piedmont recently with a ceremony and dinner in her honor. She was one of the reasons the integration of Mineral County Schools was a welcoming success, according to accounts at the celebration.

Dinah Courrier, herself a retired educator, was 14 years old and remembers Gulliver as her home economics teacher at Keyser.

Courrier said the school board could not have sent a better ambassador to teach at the newly integrated school.

“I don’t know if she thought she would be under scrutiny, but I’m sure others thought it was shocking," Courrier said. “To me, she was like any other teacher. She was always impeccably dressed, and while I can’t say that she was strict, she expected her students to do well; and she handled it with aplomb."

Courrier said that as an educator herself, the most important things students can learn from a teacher are not necessarily the subject matter and that was the case in her home economics class.

“I brought an oil cloth donkey to the dinner that I had made in her class and when I pulled it out to show her, she looked shocked that I’d kept it all those years,” Courrier said.

She said with its crooked stitches and odd ear, it reminds her that she learned much more from Gulliver than how to sew and cook.

Mineral County Board of Education member Tom Denne attended the event and reported to the school board at a recent meeting his reactions. “It was a phenomenal celebration of what could have been perceived as a negative history,” he told Superintendent Shawn Dilly and other board members.

“The positive perceptions filled the (Immanuel) church banquet room and permeated the setting. It was amazing … goosebumps,” he said. Denne said the atmosphere was one of family unity and “I felt like I was a part of a large family gathering.”

He said those attending celebrated “Separate but Equal” with pride, enthusiasm and passion. “They emphasized all of the good things about a world that was foreign to me, with absolutely no bitterness,” Denne said, adding, “some of my white generational guilt was transferred into delightful, genuine admiration.”

In celebrating Gulliver, Denne said that the former teacher had a dominant and positive influence on young people. “Her presence, even now, was powerful, vibrant, grateful and delightful,” he said.

The event was organized by T.J. Coleman, who worked to help honor another Piedmont native, Aubrey Stewart, a member of the Wereth 11, who died in Belgium during World War II.

The program opened with a ceremony to replace a sign in the town honoring Stewart and moved to the Immanuel Church for Gulliver’s recognition.