Mrs. Mary Walthall, Ph.D.
My entire life has been dedicated to teaching. I began my career by putting the cutouts on the flannelgraph for the "real" Sunday School teacher! I began "teaching" at Sunday School as soon as there were children younger than I was. I graduated from MacMurray College for Women, Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1955 and married David Walthall, my high school sweetheart, a month later. As a “commercial teacher,” I taught typing, shorthand, business machines in Albia, Iowa, for 6 years. David was a high school counselor at the same high school. He earned a MA from Northeast Missouri State Teachers college in 1960 and I followed with a MA in 1961. Then we saw the light (actually it was Florida sunshine) and moved to this glorious state. David was a counselor at St. Petersburg High School and I became the mother of twin boys. When the boys went to kindergarten, I went back to teaching. I taught at St. Petersburg High School 4 years, Clearwater High School 1 year, and Dunedin High School 16 years. In 1975 Dave earned an Ed.D. from Nova Southeastern and in 1985 I earned a Ph.D. from the University of South Florida and was offered a teaching position at SPJC.
In 2003, I retired from SPC with 17 years of awesome experiences. One of the highlights was serving as the Advisor to Phi Theta Kappa, Tau Zeta Chapter. I went a long way with PTK—China, in fact! I have had a relationship with several publishing companies, such as Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, Paradigm, and Course Technologies. I have edited more than 20 computer software textbooks before they were printed looking for any type of errors I could find. I have also written several Instructor’s Guides for Paradigm. IGs are really the “teacher’s key” which includes all the model answers, exams, and teaching tips. Also, I wrote a set of electronic testbank questions for Paradigm. I retired with regret from SPC in May, 2003. Actually, I just took the summer off and cut back from 6 classes to 4 classes. I continue to love to learn and teach.
My retirement hobbies are bicycling and beading. I bike with a group of ladies (I have the distinction of being oldest) on Tuesdays. We have a planned itinerary which is about 20 miles, mostly on the Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Pasco Trails. I have done 5 Bike and Barge trips in Holland, Germany, France and Luxembourg as well as guided tours of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. Our twin boys are now wonderful men. One is married, has our only granddaughter, and lives in Sacramento, California. His twin lives in Clearwater and does home restorations. David retired for 6 weeks in 1995 from SPJC as Associate Provost on the Clearwater Campus. Since that time his hobby job has been working in an independently-owned garage in Oldsmar. He drives for people, parts, and pizza and loved it; however he has recently re-retired! This summer, Dave and I celebrated 65 years of marriage. I am looking forward to working with you in this latest educational adventure—online learning!
