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All aces for retired teacher
Tammara Green/Post-Register
Rosalie Flint will celebrate her 80th birthday on 11/11/11.
Quincy’s longtime resident Rosalie Flint has the special distinction of turning 80 on 11/11/11. She was born to James and Viola Matthews on Nov. 11, 1931 in Coos County, Oregon, about 30 miles from the ocean.
“It was a backwards and backwoods town then, and when I went back it was worse. The whole area has gone back to weeds,” Flint remarked. She grew up there without electricity until the age of 9, when President Roosevelt put forth a special order to develop the area in 1940. In her small town, she attended a two-room schoolhouse with three other students. Even at that young age, she knew she wanted to be a teacher someday.
Her family left Oregon to come to the Yakima Valley in 1946. Flint attended Moxee High School until it flooded in 1948. Afterward, she attended Selah Senior High School, where she graduated first in her class and was assigned the title of valedictorian. She went to Central Washington University (Normal School as it was previously called) on scholarships and graduated second in her class. Eventually, she followed her family to Quincy while she was studying at Central. “One Christmas I was going to go home to Selah; my family informed me they were moving to Quincy,” said Flint.
As her smarts and college experience were in demand, especially due to a post WWII teacher shortage, she was wooed by some school districts. Finally the superintendent from Omak drove to Wenatchee during Apple Blossom to meet with her, where she was offered a position on the spot. “I was just shy of my certificate, but I was offered the certification if I went to teach. I even had my choice of job openings,” Flint said. After teaching in Omak, she ended up in Ephrata teaching fifth grade.
Flint met her husband, David Flint, on a blind date and they married in 1955. They moved to the Royal Slope, where he farmed and she taught in Royal City, Mattawa and Othello, while raising her children, David, Janet and Monica. She eventually ended up teaching fifth grade at Pioneer Elementary in Quincy. “I liked kids. I liked to see the progress they made, and I enjoyed making it interesting. The students always knew they would get to play with shells and rocks in my room, so they liked it,” said Flint.
Her favorite subjects were history, because it was about when things happened, geography, because it was about where it happened, and geology, because it is about how it got there.
Flint has many passions, and reading is at the top of the list. She is also a whiz at genealogy, and has written several books, all on her word processor. She tried out computers, but they were too slow for her. Flint has found that of all the family histories, her own has been the hardest to research.
She and her husband David, enjoyed many trips after retirement down to Florida, and she also made several trips to the East Coast to do family research. She enjoys Quincy because of the nice people around, as well as its centralized location close to the freeway.
