"A WOMAN TO WARM YOUR HEART BY"

By Dorothy Walworth

In Cornwall, an old Hudson River town at the foot of Storm King Mountain, a story began 50 years ago and has not yet ended. When I visited there last winter, the older people of the town told me about it. It is a story they are proud to remember. "She is a woman to warm your heart by," they told me. "And as for him..."

That September, when it all started, Cornwall's 70 eighth grade and high school pupils sat in a schoolroom only big enough for 20, waiting for a new teacher from upstate -- an old maid in her 30's named Frances Irene Hungerford.

One of the high school students was Steve Pigott, a tall, lanky 17-year-old. Steve was good at his studies, but his father didn't see what use school was. He kept telling Steve, "You're old enough to cut out all that foolishness." Pat Pigott was an Irish immigrant farmer who couldn't read or write.

Everyone was nice to Steve, but there was a difference, and he knew it. This was his second year in high school and he figured it would be his last. When other boys talked about how they were going to make something of themselves, Steve never said a word.

Mis Hungerford turned out to be so small that when Steve stretched out his arm she could stand under it. But she stood straight as a footrule; she had steady deep-blue eyes, and when you looked into them you knew that all the winds over Storm King wouldn't budge her an inch. Her voice was pitched low, and her smile was like turning up a lamp.

One of the first things Miss Hungerford did was to write a sentence on the blackboard: "Seest thou a man who is diligent in his business? He shall stand before Kings." The schoolroom smothered giggles over that: as is anybody in Cornwall was ever going to get anywhere near a king!

In a week she had the high school wrapped around her little finger. If some of the boys had deviltry up their sleeves, she'd just smile, and her smile took the tuck right out of them. Every morning, at assembly, the eighth grade and high school sang. Steve had a fine voice, and so did Miss Hungerford, and the songs got to be like duets between those two, with the other pupils piping away in the background.

After assembly, classes began. There weren't enough seats to go around, so Miss Hungerford always gave somebody her chair and stood up all day. She taught every subject: French, German, algebra, history English. She always gave her pupils the feeling that she learned with them. "Tell me about the Battle of Lake Erie," she'd say. "I'm curious to know."

Miss Hungerford started the Hawthorne and the Whittier literary clubs, where the boys and girls talked about authors and had ice cream afterward. Sometimes, during refreshments, she would talk about "etiquette." She would say, "Now, Stephen Pigott, suppose you were invited to a formal dinner. How would you greet your hostess?

"She's a dedicated sort of woman," people said, watching her walk back and forth from her boardinghouse to the school, early and late, in a shirtwaist and skirt and a little stiff hat, always with a load of books on her arm. She went to church twice on Sundays and to prayer meeting on Wednesday nights. But she never said a word about religion, except for that sentence on the blackboard. She just sort of lived it.

Everyone has wondered since just what there was about Miss Hungerford that fired her pupils so. Somehow she made them believe they lived in a fine world, where a miracle could happen any morning, and they were fortunate and wonderful with a lot of talent. "We've never thought so well of ourselves since," the Cornwall people say. And she sent out from that school a batch of youngsters who become important men and women all over the country.

Miss Hungerford took trouble with everybody, but she worked hardest with Steve. He stayed on in high school. She told him over and over that books were important; they were doors. Steve began wondering if there might be a door for him. Especially the spring of senior year, when they were reading "The Vision of Sir Launfal."

"A vision is a dream," Miss Hungerford told him, one night after school while he was clapping the chalk of dust out of the blackboard erasers. "My dream has always been to stay with boys and girls and books. What is yours Steve?"

He said to her then what he'd never said to a living soul: "I want to be--a marine engineer."

He thought she'd laugh, but she sat there with eyes sparkling. "You can be a marine engineer," she said. "All you need is the will to do it."

She had to give him faith in himself little by little. When she finally got Steve to speak to his father about going to college, Pat Pigott said Steve was crazy. Miss Hungerford was stubborn, though, and when fall came Steve went to Columbia University to take the mechanical engineering course.

He earned his way by working in a trolley barn; he sang in a church choir for $5 a Sunday, and did all sorts of odd jobs, studying wherever he could. Every time he got to thinking he ought to give the whole thing up, he'd slip away from Cornwall and Miss Hungerford would somehow pour courage into him.

Stephen Pigott was president of the class in his junior year; he edited the engineering-school publication; he sang in the university glee club; he was elected to a Greek-letter fraternity. And when he was graduated in 1903, Miss Hungerford sent him a telegram: "I told you so."

In 1908, Steve went to Scotland to help install a Curtis turbine for John Brown & Company, Ltd., the big shipbuilding firm that built the Mauretania and the Lusitania. He planned to remain only four months, but the company persuaded him to stay on.

In 1938, he became managing director of the company. He designed the machinery for more than 300 British ships: cruisers, submarines, the Hood, the Duke of York, the Queen Mary.

During these 30 years Steve and Miss Hungerford kept up their friendship, writing each other almost every week.

On the Queen Mary's maiden voyage Steve came back to America for a few days. Columbia was giving him an honorary degree; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers was giving him a medal.

When he went to Cornwall the whole town turned out to meet him; and he made a speech in the big new high school. Everyone expected him to talk about his work or the fine people he had met abroad. But he talked about was Miss Hungerford.

"Few have been blessed with a friendship such as she has given to me for nearly half a century," he said. "When I have felt pride in any accomplished work, the things she said to me have been in my heart."

Miss Hungerford was now teaching in an upstate town near the shore of Lake Ontario. When Steve telephoned to say that he was coming to see her, he was told she was seriously ill, and was advised not to make the visit. And so he had to sail without seeing her.

Steve is Sir Stephen Pigott now -- he was knighted in 1939, about the time he designed the machinery for the Queen Elizabeth.

Miss Hungerford, now 85, is still living in her upstate town, where she had kept on working until she was almost 80. A few years ago, her town dedicated to her the Frances Irene Hungerford Library, "in appreciation of her fineness of character, her devotion to her work, and the lasting impression she has made."

That was the story they told me in Cornwall. It made me wonder what it was about Miss Hungerford that had made people remember her all their lives. So, a few weeks ago, I went upstate to spend a day with her.

She came running down the front steps to meet me, light as a feather. Her hair is snow-white, but her eyes are the same deep blue. Even after what the Cornwall people had told me, I was not prepared for how tiny she is. Or how gay.

Her home is like her, tiny, gay, neat as a new pin. She showed me all over it, moving with quick, firm steps like a girl. In the book-filled sitting room I sat in her Boston rocker while she talked to me about Sir Stephen. She had newspaper clippings, pictures, Christmas cards, 50 years of his letters.

But, though I tried all day, I couldn't get Miss Hungerford to talk about herself. She was willing to tell only about her old pupils, calling each one by name. We had high tea at her grandmother's fine old table, and she asked a blessing. We spoke of how Sir Stephen had promised to come see her when the war is over, of how he had written in his last letter: "Wait for me, Miss Hungerford."

"I hope," she said, "that I an live long enough to see Stephen again."

"Why, Miss Hungerford," I said, "you'll live forever!"

"I know that," she answered gravely, "but I may soon be out of touch with all you people for a little while."

When the car came for me we walked to the curb together, her hand laid lightly on my arm. And then, for the first time, she spoke about herself. "You know, I feel ashamed," she said, "when I see all these bright modern teachers. Compared to them, I was not very well trained." She paused; her hand tightened on my arm. "You see, all I had was love."