RICHMOND, Va. — Twenty “old girls” got together Oct. 2 at Lakewood Manor, a Virginia Baptist retirement community, to honor a beloved teacher and principal, Marie “Polly” Van Lear, on her 87th birthday. “Old girls” is a term used by alumnae of the Baptist Girls High School in Agbor, Nigeria.
A native of Clifton Forge, Va., Van Lear came to the Baptist Girls High School in Agbor in 1960, where she initially taught biology, physics, Bible, music and English and later was principal of the school until 1974.
Some of the “old girls” of BGHS who gathered for the reunion with their beloved teacher and mentor.
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Van Lear says that she has always been interested in teaching and counseling students. A graduate of James Madison College [now University] in Harrisonburg, Va., she received a master of religious education degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
She was student union director at Radford (Va.) College [now University] and then was involved in student ministries at Southeast Missouri State College and Eastern New Mexico University prior to her appointment by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign (now International) Mission Board as a missionary to Nigeria in 1954.
Her first 20 years in Nigeria were spent in education. She taught at Idiaba Baptist Women’s Training College in Abeokuta and in 1957 was transferred to Regan Memorial Baptist High School in Yaba, Lagos.
Following her tenure at the Baptist Girls High School, she became leader of the media department of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, involved in strategic planning for education and mission work with the convention and the Foreign Mission Board.
At the reunion she was affectionately called “Mama Van Lear” by former students, some who have become doctors, lawyers, engineers and pharmacists and many of whom are now wives and mothers themselves.
Marie Van Lear teaching a biology class at the Baptist Girls High School in Agbor, Nigeria.
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Joy Ikemefuna Okpuzor is a professor of cell biology and genetics at the University of Lagos. She traveled from Nigeria to attend the reunion and says she realizes today that not all girls had the positive experience that she had during her formative years.
In the early 1940s there were no schools for girls in the Agbor area. According to Van Lear, mission agencies of several denominations began work in the area by building schools to meet the needs of the people.
The Baptist Girls School began as an elementary school, became a boarding school in 1948 and finally a high school in 1950. Southern Baptist missionary Mildred Crabtree became principal in 1946 and a great friendship began when Van Lear came to the school in 1960. Margaret Lamberth, a native of Gloucester, Va., who was appointed in 1952, was part of their group as well.
Some of the first girls in Nigeria with a high school education came from BGHS, says Van Lear. Many arrived at age 11 or 12 and remained until 18. Due to the distance to return home to visit, the teachers at the school did become like second mothers, she says.
Lizzy Nwoko Akunna, a 1971 graduate of BGHS, says Van Lear was different from other missionaries. “She was strict and kept the girls in line,” she recalls, “but we learned that serving God was not boring — it was lively and fun.”
Most of the “old girls” say that Baptists in Nigeria changed their lives. Religious activities offered at BGHS included mission groups such as Girls in Action and Lydias (similar to Young Women Auxiliaries) for the girls. Lear recalls that one time she took a group of girls to a village six miles away and established a church, teaching classes until the village people became trained.
Many at the reunion were just girls during the Nigerian civil war from 1967 to 1970, says Van Lear. Schools were forced to close, yet she and Crabtree remained at Agbor to ensure the school was preserved. Rebel soldiers tried to use it as a military base. But as several former students tell the story, Van Lear and Crabtree told them it was “Baptist property” and the campus was spared. It was one of the first schools to reopen after the war.
“Becoming friends and working with Nigerians in missions work to build up churches and helping with the [Woman’s Missionary Union] was no sacrifice for me,” she says. Throwing out food when the lights went off, taking anti-malaria tablets and bathing in a small basin of water were no fun, but she loved the African culture and the people God called her to serve.
At the reunion Van Lear dressed in the school colors — green and white. A large cake was brought out after lunch for a birthday celebration.
Mercy Ovuworie, who graduated from BGHS in 1973, organized the reunion in Richmond and one held in 2007 in Amarillo, Texas, for Mildred Crabtree.
It’s an opportunity, she says, to honor women who changed their lives and give them the opportunity to once again see their many children — not by birth but by God’s grace.
Barbara Francis ([email protected]) is a staff writer for the Religious Herald.