LITTLE ROCK — Leola Elizabeth Anderson Hagerman was affectionately known to most as “Nonna” - a nickname given to her by her grandchildren.
“Anytime anybody came in the room, she would just smile so big and stick her arms out and want to hug you,” her granddaughter Cheryl Burnett said.
Hage rman to uched countless lives through simple acts of thoughtfulness and a 27-year teaching career, Burnett said.
Hagerman died Saturdayat Heartland Rehabilitation and Care Center in Benton from congestive heart failure. She was 94.
Born Aug. 18, 1916, in Montgomery County to Smith Wheeler and BellZora Anderson, Hagerman was the oldest of four children.
In the 1930s, the family moved to Lonoke County to be sharecroppers in the midst of the Great Depression, said her daughter, Elizabeth Burnett. While picking cotton as a teenager, she met her future husband, William Thomas Hagerman.
They married Jan. 26, 1936, while she was still in high school. They had one daughter.
She graduated from high school in 1936. In 1940, the couple bought a 1,080-acre farm in the Toltec area. Adhering to advice from a friend, Hagerman received her teaching certificate from the state and began teaching at Redwine Community School in Toltec in 1941, her daughter said.
Riding to school on horseback, she was one of two teachers, instructing students in first, fourth, fifth and eighth grades.
Hagerman transferred to England Elementary School five years later where she taught first-, fifth- and sixth graders until 1958. Over several summers, Hagerman studied to get her bachelor’s degree in education, earning it from Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway - now the University of Central Arkansas - in 1959.
Hagerman taught first grade at Lynch Drive Elementary School in North Little Rock, Wilson Elementary School in Little Rock and retired from Romine Elementary School - now called Romine Interdistrict Elementary School - in Little Rock.
Elizabeth Burnett said her mother enjoyed teaching first-graders because of their desire to learn and humorous stories.
“She said one time she told a little boy that if he didn’t straighten up she’d have to tell his daddy and his daddy would spank him,” Elizabeth Burnett said. “He said to her, ‘Him ready all has.’”
In 1964, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a radical mastectomy. She retired in 1970, her daughter said.
From donating a few acres of farmland to a church in Toltec to sending notes of congratulations or condolences to former students or anyone she knew, Hagerman put others’ needs before her own.
One example was in 1976, when Hagerman’s mother was sharing a hospital room with a black woman. Elizabeth Burnett said her mother was never racist, despite growing up in that era.
“Either that lady or her daughter told my mother that she liked her purse and she proceeded to go get a paper sack and dump the contents in the sack and give her the purse,” Elizabeth Burnett said. “The daughter has stayed in touch with my mother ever since.”
Cheryl Burnett said a card from her grandmother had a newspaper clipping that read, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
“That to me just sums up how she lived her life,” Cheryl Burnett said. “She had bad things happen, but she just considered everything in life a lesson and you just have to pick up and move on.”
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 11/30/2010