Art center director remembers the teaching career of journalist
Katharyn Duff
Wednesday, February 5, 1997
Taking in the memories in Breckenridge
By KEN ELLSWORTH / Senior Staff Writer
BRECKENRIDGE - Martha Sullivan, the director of the Breckenridge
Fine Art Center, has a lot of memories and an avid willingness
to share them.
When I visited her the other day while viewing the center's
exhibit of Route 66 paintings, she entertained me with more stories
than I could keep up with.
Her best story, though, was about the early teaching career
of the famed Katharyn Duff, who was Sullivan's high school history
teacher. Duff, who died in 1995 at the age of 80, was this newspaper's
Page One columnist from 1963 to 1981. She also wrote several books
and was a journalist known for telling the truth. Various writers
have described Duff, a Sylvester native who never married, as
a crusty, chain-smoking, aggressive, hard-nosed, yellow-dog Democrat,
who was a champion of West Texas and a builder-upper, not a tearer-downer.
In the late 1930s, though, the young Katharyn Duff was Martha
Sullivan's history teacher in Rotan. Later in life, Duff would
remark that she had been "the absolute worst teacher in the
entire free world." That statement, however, must have been
one of the few Duff ever made that was less than accurate.
"I'm an old Rotan Yellowhammer. When we got a new teacher
we kids would say, 'Hot diggity dog, we've got another one we
can run off.' We were all filled with vim and vigor, you know,"
Mrs. Sullivan, now 74, said.
The Yellowhammers did not succeed, however, in running Katharyn
Duff off.
"I can remember her now," Mrs. Sullivan said. "Katharyn
Duff was kind of knock-kneed, and I remember her standing in front
of the class. She would stand there and put her hands on her hips,
and she would get after some of those football boys and really
let them have it. By the time she was through with them, well,
I tell you, she was pretty tough."
I asked Mrs. Sullivan, who would later become a teacher herself,
if Katharyn Duff had been a good teacher in addition to being
tough.
"Yeah! The teachers you remember were the tough ones,"
she said. "I think I was pretty tough myself." <I>
This column covers the cities and communities of this part of
West Texas. To contact Ken Ellsworth, call (800) 588-6397 or (915)
673-4271, Ext. 381, or write to P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604.<I>
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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