Fisher
By Helen Kull
This month, we explore yet another person for whom a Ewing school has been named: Dr. Gilmore J. Fisher, lifelong educator, and namesake of Fisher Middle School. I am indebted to Dr. Fisher’s son Tom, who kindly provided some of the material for this retrospective.
Gilmore Fisher was born in June of 1903 in the rural village of Madrid, St. Lawrence County, N.Y., near the St. Lawrence River and the border with Canada. When he was about two years of age, his father, a farmer, died of injuries from a tree falling on him. For a short time, his mother and a younger sister moved to Illinois to be with his mother’s family, but eventually they returned to Madrid.
Gil, as he was known, attended college at nearby St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. His first teaching position was in 1922-‘23 for one year, in a one-room school in nearby Waddington, N.Y., teaching 27 students at nine different levels. He took the post only two years into college so that he could earn enough income to continue with the remainder of his education.
The school district must have seen promise in this young man, as they then sent him for a six-week preparatory course in Pottstown, N.Y. He succeeded in teaching reading and arithmetic to the children of many different levels, and earning enough money to return to college.
Following graduation from St. Lawrence University in 1925, he briefly taught for a year in Highland Falls, N.Y., and then accepted a position in Rutherford, N.J. in 1926. He taught social studies and English at Union Junior High School in Rutherford, and soon became Principal of the school. He also coached football, basketball and baseball, and greatly enjoyed interacting with the young people. He later became Director of Instruction for the Rutherford school system, which required him to select the curricula and hire new teachers. During this period he also earned a Masters (1932) and a Doctorate (1944) at Columbia University Teacher’s College, while working full time.
In 1945, Ewing Township was seeking a supervising principal, to oversee the entire Ewing school system, which was poised for growth. A large pool of candidates was considered, and the board of education unanimously selected Dr. Fisher as their choice. Dr. Fisher, his wife Isabel and 12-year-old son Tom moved to Ewing in 1945. He was soon made superintendent of schools, responsible for the oversight of all administrative aspects of the school district, including complying with and enforcing regulations, hiring staff, implementing new curricula, and providing new facilities.
Rural Ewing Township, like so many others, was growing as a result of the “baby boom.” While the educational needs of the township had previously been served by a number of elementary schools for children in grades kindergarten through sixth, and junior and secondary schools in Trenton for grades seven through twelve, more facilities were desperately needed in Ewing to accommodate increased student enrollment due to the rising birth rate and immigration into the township.
Dr. Fisher tackled this need by initiating new school construction. In 1951, the new junior-senior high school opened, with the first class graduating in 1954. That same year, construction began on the new “Ewing Elementary-Junior High School,” which opened for students in September of 1955. Dr. Fisher also spearheaded the progressive “single curriculum” innovation in education in Ewing, as well as expanding programs in music and athletics.
In 1959, the school board surprised Dr. Fisher: without the superintendent’s knowledge, the school board managed to adopt a resolution renaming the Ewing Elementary-Junior High School as the Gilmore J. Fisher Elementary-Junior High School. “Doc” Fisher was deeply honored by this move, to have his name forever tied to the school district to which he gave so much.
Dr. Fisher was also active in the Lions Club, Ewing Presbyterian Church, and a YMCA group. He continued to devotedly serve the township and the school district for 10 more years, overseeing the construction of Antheil and Lore schools, until his retirement in 1969. He retired to Arizona, and passed away in January of 1984. He and his wife are interred in Madrid, N.Y.
Do you have a Ewing story to share? Please email Helen at ewingthenandnow@gmail.com.
,
