Church honors veteran of 73 years of Sunday School teaching

GAINESVILLE - The year was 1939. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term in the White House - and in Europe, World War II was just beginning.

That's the same year a 15-year-old girl started teaching Sunday School at St. Paul United United Methodist Church on Washington Street in Gainesville, something that would last for next 73 years.

Evelyn Hancock, who is now 88, says she started with a class of 6-year-olds and then moved to the kindergarten class seven years later. She stayed with the church's kindergarten class for the next seven decades.

Why the kindergarten class? She says there was no particular reason.

"I started with (the) class of 6-year-olds and I soon realized I was really enjoying it," Hancock said. "And, then about seven years later, they asked if I would do the kindergarten class, teaching 5-year-olds and I stayed with that group until I retired earlier this year."

Hancock gave up the class while recovering from a broken hip. She said she is "well" now but "at the time I just felt it was time for me to do that (retire)."

She said there was no one reason that she kept teaching the class Sunday-after-Sunday, year-after-year, adding, she was having fun and that's where she was needed. "I liked it so much and I just couldn't give it up...each year they would ask me if I wanted to do it another year, and I would say 'yes,' I'm enjoying it."

Hancock says she hopes the youngsters she taught over the years learned something in all those classes. She knows she did.

"I don't know (how to describe it), I just feel like I was one of them and we had a good rapport together."

Hancock said she never really felt deprived because she wasn't able to attend an adult Sunday School class all those years.

"No, I did not. I really did not...never felt like I was deprived of anything by not being in an adult class."

One of her greatest joys is that by the time she retired, she was teaching the children and grandchildren of some of her former students.

"It's really rewarding to see these children grow up and become leaders and active members of the church and a lot of them serving (their community) on boards and that sort of thing and to realize they were once 5-year-olds!"

Hancock goes back to that word "fun" when describing the one thing that kept her going.

"I have a lot of wonderful memories and its hard to realize that these 73 years have gone so quickly. But, you know the saying 'time flies when your having fun' and I was having fun."

When the church honored Hancock recently for her 73 years as a Sunday School teacher, many of her former students were on hand to celebrate with her.

It was also through St. Paul that she met her late husband. She married Pierce Hancock, who went on to become a Gainesville bank president, in 1946.

And, while she may have given up the Sunday School class at St. Paul, she still sings in the choir - and, oh yes, she's now in the 74th year of that.