Helen Revis Doeshot Music Scholarship Announced
by Tom Hottovy
January 23, 2010
A new scholarship will be offered by the Freeman Public Schools Foundation to a Freeman graduate majoring in music. The scholarship will be offered to a junior or senior college student. A music education major is preferred, but other music majors will be considered. This scholarship is given in honor of Helen Revis Doeschot by her children: Linda Doeschot Koeman, David Doeschot, and Philip Doeschot.
Helen Isabelle Revis Doeschot, and her family lived in the Adams area during her growing up years. She and her brother, Robert, first attended Grandview School and then Harnlay School. She attended high school at Adams and the final two years there (junior and senior years) she was enrolled in the Normal Training Program which prepared her to become a teacher after her graduation in 1937 at the age of 17. The Normal Training allowed a student to teach in the "country schools" that existed at that time but could not teach in the "town schools".
After graduation, Helen followed in the footsteps of her Mother and several aunts and became a teacher. She at first taught at District 28, which was not far from Panama. Her next teaching job was Hooker School, which was south of Adams. She talked a lot about what it was like to teach in a country school with children in all eight grades. She said the students had to learn from each other because there was so little time to teach all of them herself. She had other duties as a teacher. She had to prepare for Christmas programs, build fires in the winter to keep warm and even once had to kill a snake that crept up through the floor boards. She often talked about preparing 8th graders for an examination that if they passed would allow them to go to high school in town. She stated how stressful that was. She did do some summer studies at Peru State Teachers College but discontinued teaching the year before she married Leal Doeschot. Before marriage, she worked at Cushman’s in Lincoln until a principal from Firth came to her place of employment to plead with her to finish out the spring semester for someone that had to leave her teaching position. However, after she was married she had to give up teaching as teachers were not allowed to be married.
Helen seemed to always be a teacher. There was rarely a time that she wasn't teaching piano. In fact she still had a few students until three months before she died. She also was a 4-H leader, Junior and Young People's Choir Director with Leona Vanderbeek and Gladys Kroese at Pella Reformed Church. She also taught Sunday school and often visited the Firth Nursing Home by herself and with her students, presenting recitals and teaching Bible Study, as well as exercises. Her philosophy was that everyone could learn and worked very hard to find the avenue that would turn that light bulb on in each child she worked with.
Helen’s daughter, Linda Doeschot Koeman, became a teacher because of her mother. Her habit of working hard and looking inward "what I can do or what am I doing that is getting in the way of learning here" has served Linda well throughout her career. It was just understood from both parents that Linda and her brothers, David and Philip, would go to college and would graduate. Linda still remembers calling her mom when she did not make a select Choir at the University as a sophomore music education major. "Well," Helen said, "you can feel sorry for yourself or you can get busy learning what you need to know or you can change your major." Linda was expecting a little sympathy but that was not Helen’s style. Linda says, “I am thankful every day for this advice and for my mother.”
Any Freeman graduate majoring in music during the junior or senior year, who may be interested in this valuable scholarship, should contact Tom Hottovy at Freeman Public Schools. The Freeman Public Schools Foundation is very appreciative of Helen Revis Doeshot’s family for this generous contribution to the success of a Freeman graduate.
