By Christine M. Quirk — [email protected]
From a parsonage in Central Massachusetts to Concord classrooms to her current home at Concord Park, Frances Gardella has spent the better part of a century teaching, traveling, and volunteering in her community.
Gardella’s family honored her with an open house last Saturday at the Council on Aging, inviting the community to celebrate her 100th birthday.
Gardella credits her long life largely to genetics. “My mother lived to be 103, and my great-grandmother [lived] to be 104,” she said.
Her blended family includes seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, by birth and by marriage, who bring her “the greatest joy.”
“I feel close to all of them, and I believe they all feel close to me,” she said.
All her children
Gardella was born April 4, 1925, in Leverett. She graduated from Amherst High School in 1942 and went on to Fitchburg State College to pursue a teaching degree. She graduated in 1945 from an accelerated program because teachers were so badly needed.
She taught for a year in Agawam before marrying her husband, Ronald, in 1947 and moving to Florida, where she was a substitute teacher and a school librarian.
Ronald died in 1983.
“We moved here in 1958 because my husband took a job in Boston,” she said. “I’ve lived in Concord ever since.”
After subbing in Concord for many years, she returned to teaching full time in 1965. One of her classrooms was a “one-two combination,” where she and her students moved as a class from first to second grade.
“I did that for about three years,” she said. “I loved it, the children loved it, and the parents loved it. It worked out well.”
Gardella also had a class of special needs students years before inclusion and mainstreaming were the norm.
“I took a class of children [that] just couldn’t work in a regular classroom,” she said. “I had a regular kindergarten class in the morning and then the special class in the afternoon. … It turned out to be a very good class.”
Gardella said she treated her students as if they were her children.
“I really loved teaching,” she said. “I taught at all of the schools here in Concord as I was needed, and I found every new experience a growing experience.”
Travel and volunteerism
Gardella retired from teaching in 1990, but sitting idly at home wasn’t in her nature. She traveled the world, enjoying trips to Alaska, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, to name a few.
At home, she was on Concord Family Service and Minuteman Arc boards, served on the Cable Advisory Committee, and volunteered with the Council on Aging.
Gardella also helped found a program at West Concord Union Church to help make worship more inclusive.
“There are people of all abilities, so we decided that we would form a group open to anybody in any town around,” she said. “We let all the different churches know that we were doing that to help them learn more and broaden their experience of worship.”
That grew into “Sunday Fellowship,” which still meets every other week.
“We would have a prayer circle, and their prayers were very beautiful and moving,” she said.
Gardella was a five-time president of the West Concord Women’s Club, which she joined in the 1960s. One of her many accomplishments there was creating a commemorative Concord quilt.
“Ours was different [because] this was the only one that had West Concord,” she said. “We looked at different places like the Damon Mill and the Harvey Wheeler School.”
The quilt earned the group thousands, allowing the club to fund scholarships for many years.
The golden rule
Part of her happy life, Gardella said, is her “deep faith.”
“I’ve always tried to live my life and treat others as I want to be treated,” she said. ”People tell me I’m a good listener.”
She’s always been able to “speak up,” she said.
“It’s happened in school settings, it’s happened in clubs, and it’s happened here,” she said. “It helps me to feel that even at my age, I am still able to help others.”
Laura Hayes contributed reporting.
