OBERLIN – When Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison arrived in Oberlin on April 23, her old first-grade teacher Esther Hunt was unable to meet with her but sent greetings.

Hunt, 98, had a longstanding commitment to attend a relative`s school event in Connecticut.

At the urging of Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov, Hunt – who has traded notes with Morrison in the past – sent along greetings to her best-known student.

It was 1937 when Hunt taught Morrison, the author of nine novels, including “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon,” “The Bluest Eye” and “A Mercy.”

“I don`t think I did anything to impede her,” joked Hunt, who began teaching at the age of 18 after graduating from a two-year primary school teaching program at Oberlin College.

As a child, Morrison was a well-behaved girl who excelled in reading and writing.

“She always had a bunch of kids with her,” Hunt recalled. “She was very popular.”

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, Morrison later used Toni, a shortened version of her middle name, and kept her married name of Morrison for writing.

Hunt, a resident of Kendal at Oberlin, retired in 1974 from her 45-year career as a teacher and tester for the Lorain City Schools.

Hunt, who taught at the former Boone Elementary School, used all kinds of hands-on methods of inspiring youngsters, even when they were sometimes against the rules.

For example, it was forbidden to give the students treats, but Hunt popped popcorn so the kids could see the reaction of kernels to heat.

The smell permeated the school, the tasty evidence was gobbled up, and the superintendent who set the rule against treats “never said a word,” she said.

Her children watched as chicks hatched from a laying hen, and they even built a model streetcar out of old mattress frames to mimic “Dinky,” the streetcar that ran in Lorain.

She learned enough Spanish to teach the children of Puerto Ricans who came to work in the steel mills and witnessed the melting pot that was Lorain.

Hispanic women, who initially stayed at home, quickly learned to get driver`s licenses and take charge of motivating their children to become educated, she said.

“If I were really ambitious, I would write how I observed a whole change in one group,” Hunt said.

Children did not attend segregated schools in Lorain, a fact that Morrison said surprises some young people she meets today.

Morrison, now 78, was in town to speak at the Oberlin College Convocation Series and for the dedication program: “A Bench By the Road, a tribute in memory of the enslaved persons who sought refuge in Oberlin.”

During a question-and-answer period following her speech, Morrison had fond memories of growing up in Lorain and her teachers, whom she said all thought she was very smart.

Besides Morrison, Hunt can point to the creme de la creme of Lorain County as former students who later excelled in the banking, law and medical professions.

If she has any advice to young teachers today, it would be to “never forget that the children who come to school were not born on the steps of the school – you have to take a child who has had five or six years of a kind of lifestyle and life training that are deeply imbedded.”

Young teachers probably “aren`t aggressive enough” in pushing the rules of the educational system to inspire youngsters, Hunt said. “You have to fight with finesse,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

Send your Wellington and Oberlin news to Cindy Leise, 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

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