wfn.org | PSCE Kindergarten Founder Josephine Newbury Dies

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

30-December-1996 
 
 
97003    PSCE Kindergarten Founder Josephine Newbury Dies 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The 88-year-old founding director of the kindergarten at 
the Presbyterian School of Christian Education's (PSCE) died at a Richmond 
retirement center Sunday, Dec. 29. 
 
     A memorial service for Josephine Newbury will be held at 2 p.m. 
Saturday, Jan. 4, at the chapel at Westminster-Canterbury, 1600 Westbrook 
Center, the Presbyterian/Episcopal retirement center where she was a 
resident.  The Rev. Dr. Robert Q. Pierce of the Ginter Park Presbyterian 
Church will officiate. 
 
     "Miss Newbury was important not only to the PSCE community but to the 
city of Richmond," said Dr. Wayne G. Boulton, PSCE's president.  "Her 
example of loving children as we help them develop inspires us to this day.  
 
     "We and the many alumni/ae she taught will miss her.  We're blessed to 
have the Josephine Newbury Center for Childhood Education to carry on her 
work." 
 
     Operating since 1957, the Newbury Center was one of Richmond's first 
kindergartens and it still serves as a laboratory preschool for PSCE.  It 
was begun as a "demonstration kindergarten," and, in its first four months 
of operation, over 800 visitors observed classes there through a one-way 
glass partition from a specially-designed observation room. 
 
      Newbury joined the faculty at PSCE in 1952 as associate professor of 
Christian education and assistant director of field work.  She retired in 
1974.  For seven years, she wrote a monthly article for "Presbyterian 
Action," a Christian education magazine, and wrote three books on 
resourcing church kindergartens. 
 
     In her retirement, "she continued to correspond quite widely with her 
former students, almost daily," said Elizabeth Ramsey, who directed the 
Newbury Center after Newbury's retirement.  "She proudly displayed in her 
apartment hundreds of pictures of those former pupils." 
 
     Memorial gifts may be sent to the Newbury Center at PSCE. 
 
 
(This article was supplied by the Presbyterian School for Christian 
Education.) 

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