The Dash Between: To Carol Fankhauser, teaching was ‘what she lived for’
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First-graders at Copopa Elementary School in Columbia Station thought their teacher, Carol Fankhauser, was simply teaching them how to cook when they prepared new recipes together in the classroom.
But Carol designed such activities to serve as multi-level learning experiences.
Through the recipe exercise, the Martha Holden Jennings scholar gave her kids lessons in nutrition, reading and vocabulary, addition and subtraction and geography (places where ingredients originated), as well as reading, measuring and following directions.
More photos below.
“Her love to develop a child until the light would come on, when she was actually seeing the child’s response: That’s what she lived for,” said her husband of 37 years, Larry.
The Columbia Station resident, who died of complications from breast cancer March 6, 2010, at age 60, brought a variety of people into her classroom to make learning fun.
| The Dash Between: About this feature |
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The dates of birth and death that appear like bookends on a tombstone do not matter as much as the dash between those dates: The life that a person lived.
 Alana Baranick The Dash Between is an obituary feature written by Alana Baranick about regular folks from Lorain County and adjacent areas. Baranick wrote her first obit in 1985 when she was a reporter for The Chronicle. She wrote obituaries for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer from 1992 through 2008.  "Life on the Death Beat" She is the chief author of “Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers” and director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers. She won the 2005 American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award in the Obituary category. Today, Alana Baranick examines The Dash Between May 31, 1949, when Carol Street Fankhauser was born in Lorain, and March 6, 2010, when the retired Copopa Elementary School teacher died at New Life Hospice Center at St. Joseph in Lorain at age 60. The Dash Between is scheduled to appear in The Chronicle every other Sunday. To suggest a story or make a comment, contact Baranick at abaranick@chroniclet.com. Read more:
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Columbia High School home economics students worked with her charges on stitching, stuffing and decorating pillows with such creatures as penguins and polar bears. These projects provided lessons on sewing and animals.
Carol invited a dance troupe from Indiana to demonstrate clogging, a group of jump rope performers to show their stuff and an aerobics instructor to her classroom to show her pupils the joy of physical exercise.
“I grew up in her classroom,” said her daughter, Heather. “From the time I was a toddler, she would take me to school with her. As a result of that influence, I became a teacher myself. She was so well-rounded and so out-of-the-box. Life was just one big lesson.”
Born Carol Lee Street in Lorain on May 31, 1949, she grew up with her older brother, Jack Street, on West 10th Street off Oberlin Avenue.
Her father, John C., worked for the Lorain Telephone Co., first as a lineman, later as personnel director. After his death in 1977, her mother married again and became Marge Spangler. She still lives at the West 10th house.
“Carol was a determined child and independent,” her mother said. “She knew what she wanted. She wanted to be a teacher, and that’s what she became.”
When Carol, whose maternal grandparents were born in Scotland, took up competitive Scottish dancing in the early 1960s, the family traveled throughout Ohio and to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Canada.
“Wherever Carol wanted to go for competition, we went,” her mother said. “Carol was good at anything she set her mind and heart on.”
She was a cheerleader at Irving Junior High and an office aide at Lorain High School. She would have participated in sports, if they had been offered to girls.
After graduating in 1967, Carol attended Ball State University, where she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree.
She began teaching as “Miss Street” at Larkmoor Elementary School in Lorain, but became “Mrs. Fankhauser” on Nov. 25, 1972. She met Larry Fankhauser, a returning Vietnam War veteran, at a mutual friend’s house.
“We dated about six months,” Larry said. “It was one of those things that was kind of meant to be.”
Carol was on the faculty at Garfield Elementary before she started teaching in the Columbia schools in the early 1980s. She was a reading specialist, cheerleader advisor and assistant track coach at Columbia Middle School before joining the faculty at Copopa, where she became known for her wardrobe.
To her students’ delight, she wore sweaters that were decorated with themes and brand-name products they recognized, such as Campbell’s soup, Crayola crayons and clowns. Her outfits, including shoes, and her coffee mug of the day were color-coordinated.
After retiring in 2002, Carol took a job with the Maria Gardens greenhouse in Strongsville.
“She gave up acrylic nails to work at the greenhouse and play in the dirt,” her husband said.
She did extensive landscaping at home, potted plants for friends and tended to flowers and small shrubs at Christ Church in Columbia Station.
“She had the greenest thumb,” her daughter said. “It was like neon. You should see the yard. It’s like a piece of art. She could make anything grow and just burst into flowers.”
Carol also loved to downhill ski until an appreciation for warmer weather and the lower impact of water sports on the knees led to her interest in snorkeling and later scuba diving.
“She was always kind of a thrill taker,” her brother said. “I can remember her doing skateboarding. Somebody reminded me of her riding a unicycle.”
Carol frequented Cedar Point, Geauga Lake and other amusement parks.
“She was game for anything,” her friend Kellie Johnston said. “Many summers, just the two of us went to Dover Lake Park and did all the waterslides. Last summer, we rented a paddle boat on Hinckley Lake and paddled around.”
When going through chemotherapy treatments, Carol dressed in colorful clothes, her hair and makeup flawless. She even baked cookies for the nurses. She felt that other patients, who showed up in pajamas, had decided they were going to be sick.
“She honestly believed that having a positive outlook really changed what happened to you,” Johnston said. “She lived her whole life that way.”
Contact Alana Baranick at (216) 862-2617 or abaranick@chroniclet.com.
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