n e w c h u r c h l i f e : j u ly / au g u s t 2 0 1 4
While she understood this perspective, she was confident of the value
mathematics could have in students’ lives. She stated:
We believe, perhaps old-fashionedly, that mathematics has a value in developing
certain faculties of the mind with which almost all are endowed, and which cannot
be as well developed without it.
Many students remember her calm patience at explaining and reexplaining math problems that perplexed them even to tears.
In the spring of 1958 Morna returned from taking the AKM sorority on
a weekend trip only to learn at nine that Sunday evening that she would be
the acting principal of the Girls School, starting first thing the next day. The
principal, Miss Dorothy Davis, needed an emergency operation.
While Morna’s father had apparently mentioned the possibility of her
filling the role of principal someday, it was not one that Morna aimed for. At
the time, she was 40 years old and one of the youngest members of the faculty.
She described her first experience of the job as being like playing ping pong.
Things kept coming at her and she had to respond with no time to do anything
else. Morna wrote in an end-of-year report describing the sudden loss of the
Girls School principal:
It’s like home without Mama, but we are struggling along as best we can. We
teachers had all thought our time was fully taken up with our regular jobs, so we
have had to cut corners here and there in order to take on all the big and little things
that Miss Dorothy did, many of which we did not know about.
Although Miss Dorothy returned briefly, Morna was appointed as the
principal of the Girls School early in 1959. One of her sisters described her
weekday working schedule as: 7:30 a.m. to 12:50 p.m., when she went home
for lunch, returning at 1:30 and working to 6:15. After supper she regularly
returned to work from 7:30 to 10 or 10:30. She followed a similar schedule
whether she was principal or as a member of the faculty, with many committee
responsibilities. But these long hours were not a defense against people. She
enjoyed the many connections she had with people, saving countless notes,
cards and appreciations.
A 20-something much younger sibling described her with these words:
Morna is good at many things but there is only one thing at which she is really
great. When everything breaks loose at once and everybody is flying off the handle
or going into shock, she always remains calm and goes steadily about the business
of straightening everything out and getting everybody (both students and adults)
back on the right track. Her method is so effective because she never tries to smooth
things over or have them forgotten. She always tries to get straight to the heart of
the trouble and does this with such earnest good feeling and directness that the
people involved are often swept along by the spirit and find themselves abandoning
their own contributions to H