Hermiston herald., September 30, 2020, Page 10, Image 10

FROM PAGE ONE
A10 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Love:
Continued from Page A1
lot of Smitty’s Ace Hard-
ware, Claudia Meza said it
was her fi rst year participat-
ing in I Love My City, but
she would defi nitely be back
for future events. She said it
was fun being able to help
people without any expecta-
tion of something in return.
“People have been grate-
ful and happy and that’s
been the biggest blessing,
seeing people happy,” she
said.
The group washed more
than 50 vehicles during the
allotted three-hour block of
time, according to Hankel.
Alejandro Ramirez was
piling up bags of discarded
weeds and clippings across
from the Hermiston Com-
munity Center on Sept. 26,
as volunteers trimmed and
weeded the landscaping
along the pedestrian path
there. He said he and the
other volunteers were there
because they were Chris-
tians and believed “we’ve
got to help one another.”
“That’s what the church
is based on, and we’ve got
to show that by our actions,”
he said.
On Sunday, Sept. 27,
more than 200 people met
up at Butte Park for a social-
ly-distanced joint worship
service led by the pastors
of the churches involved
in I Love My City. Hankel
said at the event they sang
together and prayed for the
nation and for Hermiston.
He said they hope to
increase the frequency of I
Love My City events in the
future.
To get information about
future events or to sign up
to get involved, visit www.
ilovehermiston.com.
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
Hermiston Police Department offi cer Erica Sandoval visits
with children holding signs to advertise the free car wash in
the Ace Hardware parking lot in Hermiston during the I Love
My City event on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020.
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
A volunteer cleans up litter in downtown Hermiston during the I Love My City event on
Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020.
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
A volunteer picks up trash by the railroad tracks along Highway 395 in Hermiston during the I
Love My City event on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020.
Teacher:
Continued from Page A1
Sullivan was her stu-
dent at a school for inter-
national students in Bah-
rain. She arrived there as
a refugee who had fl ed the
Vietnam War, and then ran
again from a coup d’état in
Africa.
“It was a lot for a
12-year-old girl, and Miss
D understood that,” she
said.
Sullivan had Doherty as
a teacher for History and
Physical Education, and
said what really made her
stand out as a teacher was
the great confi dence she
instilled in each student.
She convinced “the shiest
girl in school” to success-
fully try out for the lead in
the school play, Sullivan
said, and helped unathletic
teens, such as herself, stop
feeling deeply self con-
scious about their skills in
PE.
She also made her
subjects come alive for
students.
“For history, she didn’t
just teach from the book,”
Sullivan said. “She made it
real. She kind of put you in
that place. It wasn’t just ‘On
such and such a date was
the Battle of Hastings.’”
She described Doherty
as “so short, but so feisty,”
with a commanding pres-
ence and a witty sense of
humor.
“She was just such
a
force,”
Sullivan
remembered.
Sheila Silvola, another
former
student
from
Doherty’s Bahrain years,
described
her
former
teacher as a “fi rebrand”
but said she also acted as a
mentor and mother fi gure,
particularly for students,
such as Silvola, who were
boarding at the school.
Doherty coached tennis,
and Silvola said Doherty
could often be found sitting
by the tennis courts talking
late into the night with
groups of students who
had wandered down the the
courts to play or to watch
after dinner.
“She had so many nug-
gets of wisdom,” she said.
Fahad Murad, Bah-
rain High School Class of
1977, said in an email that
Doherty has left a last-
ing impact on hundreds of
students.
When she retired, her
Contributed photo by Eraj Asad
Mary Doherty talks to her students at Bahrain School
sometime around 1980.
former students pitched in
on a new Volkswagon Bee-
tle to replace the one she
had been driving for years.
Murad said she taught
him about hard work and
dedication. He had never
even held a tennis racket
before when she convinced
him to try out for the ten-
nis team, and by the end of
the year he and his doubles
partner were the top team in
the school.
“But as I noted, the les-
son made was more about
life than it was about tennis
and I applied those same
principles till today for
which I now try and pass
on to my children,” he said.
Myrna Herrera O’Brien
said it was Doherty’s
infl uence in building her
self-confi dence as a teen-
ager that made her decide
to become a PE teacher.
“My story is long but
Ms. Doherty was the cor-
nerstone on which I built
myself,” she wrote in an
email. “Married 56 years
this December, raised three
children and grandmother
of three and I have never
forgotten what Ms. Doherty
did for me.”
After her birthday party
last week, Doherty waived
off comments that people
were impressed by how
well she remembered so
many students, so many
years later.
“No two people are
alike, and you have them in
a classroom several hours
a week for a year, plus I
had them in extra-curric-
ulars,” she said in a phone
interview.
She has kept in touch
with many students over
the years through emails
and letters, but said it was
“a fun blast from the past”
to see so many of them over
video chat.
Doherty grew up at
the same farm outside of
Hermiston she still lives
on today, after her parents
immigrated to the United
States from Ireland. From a
young age, she worked hard
with her parents to keep the
farm running through the
Great Depression.
“You name it, I could do
it — slop a hog, milk a cow,
harness a team,” she said.
Her parents placed a
great deal of emphasis on
letting their children have
the education they never
did, however, and Doherty
grew up checking out books
from Hermiston’s Carne-
gie Library that still stands
today, and reading of far-
away places in the family’s
set of encyclopedias. That
inspired her to go to college
— a rarity for women at the
time — and then to travel
the world and teach.
She described herself
as a “jack of all trades” at
many of the small, inter-
national, Department of
Defense-funded
schools
she taught at, but her pas-
sion was for social studies,
particularly history.
“If you don’t know
history, you don’t know
squat,” she said. “The past
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A volunteer washes a car for free in the Ace Hardware parking
lot in Hermiston during the I Love My City event on Saturday,
Sept. 26, 2020
is prologue to the future.
If you don’t know history,
you don’t know where
you’re going.”
In economics classes,
she taught students to man-
age their money well within
the economic structure. In
government classes, she
would have her students
bring in their constitutions
from their home countries
and the class would discuss
the differences.
Her classes were incred-
ibly diverse, she said, with
students from all over the
world representing a wide
variety of demographics.
And yet, both Doherty and
her former students said
she always found the com-
mon human threads run-
ning through all of them.
Doherty said her years
of traveling and living in
dozens of different coun-
tries have taught her that
humans have more com-
monalities than differences.
“What makes you laugh,
makes them laugh. What
makes you cry, makes them
cry,” she said.
Doherty’s nieces, Kara
and Sarah Campbell, said
they started out with a
secret Facebook page ask-
ing former students to send
birthday cards to Doherty,
but everyone started ask-
ing why they couldn’t have
a virtual party too.
Sarah said her aunt is
a “ball of energy” and a
cheerleader for others who
was always planting lit-
tle seeds of confi dence in
her students that they could
try out for an extracurric-
ular activity or go for one
of their dreams. She said
to this day, Doherty has a
great repartee with teen-
age relatives — and anyone
else she talks to.
“She’s not your typi-
cal 90-year-old,” she said.
“She’s redefi ning what that
age looks like.”
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