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Ambrose Leo Suhrie
Ambrose Suhrie was the seventh child of the marriage of Mary Louisa “Theresa” Topper and Francis Suhre of New Baltimore, Pennsylvania. He was a teacher who began his teaching career in the Allegheny Mountains of Somerset County, Pennsylvania just a few miles from his home when he was still in his teens. His devotion and drive led him to become a school principal at the age of 21 years and a District Superintendent of Schools when he was just 22 years old and for some years after that. Years thereafter he became a professor of education at New York University in New York City for nearly twenty years.
Toward the close of his life he had occasion to describe his teaching career in the work, Teacher of Teachers Ambrose Suhrie explained a career that embraced the teaching experience on every level from the elementary grade to graduate school, not omitting administration and consultation services. He remembers, “I was a high school principal, ready to cast his first vote the year William Jennings Bryan was first a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, I was already a school superintendent when the Spanish American War was on. I was a college teacher down in Florida before there were in all the South, as many as a score of public high schools whose graduates might be admitted to a reputable American college.”
He notes, “I was a member of the team of ‘educational evangelists’ which the General Education Board of New York financed in 1908 in its campaign all over the South for the establishment of state systems of public high school. I was the head of the municipal teachers college in Cleveland, Ohio, when the whole staff of its great school system went on the march toward professional goals and standards in public school teaching.”
Further, Suhrie notes he helped after World War I to “recondition” grade school teachers for a complete new city system of junior high schools for a period of eighteen years one of the first graduate departments for the advanced professional education of normal school and teacher college officers and staff members in a nationally known American University.
He indicates that he was privileged to organize shortly thereafter, and to conduct, professional education of normal schools and teacher college officers and staff members in a nationally known American university. He notes, “And I was privileged also to have a little part in the upsurge of Negro college education which followed World War II.”
Once asked to describe for a large audience of teachers, the best school he had ever known or attended, he had no hesitation in making the choice, he responded gladly, “It was my home life on the farm. I attended the ‘school’ continuously from my earliest infancy until I was nineteen years of age and ready to leave the parental roof.”
Suhrie went on, “ I was never quite sure who was the principal of this home-school. Sometime I thought Father was; sometimes I knew Mother was; sometimes I was. And some times the youngest baby in the cradle was, by her very helplessness, the most effective teacher of us all. We all gladly did what we could for her comfort and happiness; for we knew instinctively that she, better than any one else, could teach us sympathy and love and understanding of human need.”
“I cannot remember the time when I was not regarded by my father, by my mother, and by all my brothers and sisters as absolutely indispensable to the welfare and happiness of all other members of our household. I never doubted for a moment in my childhood that I really belonged, that I had stock is the company, and that I might expect to draw dividends. I knew I was useful. How did I know? Well, my father, my mother my big brothers and my sisters had often told me so and had told each other is my presence. They built up my confidence, they bolstered up my wavering courage, they shared with me their joy in my accomplishments and in my growing usefulness; they strengthened my every effort to participate in the work that had to be done to keep things going . . .. And I cannot remember when my good father failed to speak a word of approval or give me a hearty commendation when I had done my best to be useful. Oh, the joy of these precious moments and the golden memories I have of them when I write these lines!”
“My best ‘school’ was our family at work and my family life at its best was our school in session.”
The Suhrie Family, young Ambrose is on the left.
1891 - 1893 - Teacher, Suhrie School, Allegheny Twp., Somerset County, PA
1894 - 1895 - Teacher, 8th and 9th grades, Oscela Mills, Clearfield County, PA
1895 - 1896 - High School Principal, Emporium, Cameron County, PA
1897 - 1902 - High School Teacher and District Superintendent of Schools, Wilcox, Elk County, PA
1905 - 1910 - Professor of Education and Director of Teachers College, Stetson University, Deland, FL
1911 -1914 - Professor and Director Normal Department, Georgia State College for Women, Milledgeville, GA
1915 - 1917 - Professor of Education, State Normal School, West Chester, PA
1918 - 1924 - Dean, Cleveland School of Education, Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve U.)
1924 - 1942 - Professor of Education, New York University, NYC
1942 - 1943 - Visiting Professor, Atlanta University
1943 - 1944 - Traveling Consultant, Co-operative Negro College Study Commission
1945 - 1955 - Resident Consultant, Southern Missionary College (now Southern Adventist University, Collegedale, TN
1894 - B.E. - Pennsylvania Normal School
1896 - M.E. - Pennsylvania Normal School
1906 -Ph.B. - Stetson University
1911 -M.A. - University of Pennsylvania
1912 - Ph.D. - University of Pennsylvania
1919 - L.L.D. - Stetson University (Honorary)
1941- D.Litt. - Duquesne University (Honorary)