Eddington teacher a model of optimism, persistence

EDDINGTON — Most role models of today are sports stars, movie stars or the made-for-TV heroes.

Their fame is often fleeting, so they inspire little more than awe. Or they are from too far away or are too out of reach to cause youthful admirers to aspire to follow in their footprints.

But sometimes role models sprout up in our own back yards. They aren’t rich or glamorous or unusually talented, and you don’t see them on the television. They’re usually too modest and hard-working to think about themselves and their contributions.

Meet Donna Oliver, who over the last 11 years has gone from school bus driver to schoolteacher. She would never consider herself a role model. She goes about her business as a fourth-grade teacher at the Eddington Elementary School, striving to leave her mark on the future through the students in her classroom.

Oliver, 46, has an engaging smile and an effervescent personality, both of which are highly contagious to those around her. Married to Kevin Oliver, she has three children: Denise, 27, who has three children of her own; Judy, a sophomore at the University of Maine; and Teresa, a junior at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor.

Donna Oliver graduated from Belfast High School in the late 1960s, marrying immediately because she was eager to start a family, she said. She went through what she calls “our hippie stage,” but soon divorced and found herself a single mother. She later remarried and settled comfortably into her life as a housewife and mother.

As times changed — both parents in many families could be found working to help make ends meet — Oliver began to consider joining the work force. To gain experience, she applied for the position of a minibus driver in the Monmouth school district.

“I wasn’t interested in driving,” she said. “I just wanted the interview experience because I was a housewife who was starting to do them. The guy hired me on the spot. I wasn’t expecting to work.”

What she found out, however, was that she loved the kids. She would drive the bus, with her own children sometimes riding on board. When she wasn’t busy shuttling students between the middle school and Monmouth Academy, she went inside and offered to help in any way she could.

“I could have sat out on the bus and earned money, but I didn’t feel right about doing that. So I just went inside and helped out with the kids,” she said.

Just like that, a spark was lit. It was all about the kids, helping them learn, watching them grow.

Even after she and her family relocated to Eddington, a small town of nearly 2,000 people along the eastern shore of the Penobscot River, she got a job driving a bus and helping out as a cook in the kitchen. Again, she offered her time to teachers in the classrooms.

It was those same teachers who talked her into going back to school and earning her degree.

She began that task in 1984, taking one course per semester at what was then the Eastern Maine Vocational Technical Institute in Bangor. She later transferred to the University of Maine and earned her bachelor’s degree in 1992.

“It’s like I tell the kids, you have to start somewhere, even if it looks impossible,” she said. “If you can just start, just get a toehold, then you can go a little ways and survey the situation. But you have to get that toehold first.”

Using the same never-give-up attitude which got her through college as a working mother, she is now helping to make the Eddington school a better place.

“If we only had a school full of Donnas,” said Susan Rowe, Oliver’s teaching partner. “She does not know the meaning of the word `stop.”‘

Oliver has written for numerous grants over the last few years. Most of the time she is turned down. “But, I can’t not try,” she said.

She has received grants which have helped buy four computers for her classroom, and she has also helped set up an on-line computer bulletin board for the use of the Eddington, Holden and Dedham schools.

Recently, she has received grants to help out her Penobscot River Project, in which her students are involved in constructing a model of the Penobscot River from Orono to the Eddington bend inside a 3-by-6-foot Plexiglas tank.

By the time the class completes the project, Oliver hopes to have built a model complete with running water, real grass, minihouses and dams. The river will also have some pollution, she adds.

“I don’t know where it comes from,” Oliver said. “I wish I could tell you. I think I’ve just always had those can-do thoughts. I’ve just always had the positive outlook. I’d rather be positive than negative.”