HERE’S TO YOU MISS IDA BELLE!
In the old South, Miss Ida Belle Williams would be deemed an “old-maid school teacher.”
During this Women’s History Month, let us take a look back at one of Dublin's own female citizens, who was more than a teacher and the impact that she had on her true children, the thousands of young people whom she taught the fundamentals of good education.
Ida Belle Williams was born in December 1886 in Swainsboro, Georgia. She was a daughter of Swainsboro attorney Robert J. Williams and his bride Mary E. Camp Williams. She lived with her half-sister, Mrs. G.H. Williams, beginning in 1901 until her high school graduation.
In 1921, Ida Belle Williams journeyed to Atlanta to seek a job with the Atlanta Journal. Her nephew Gladstone Williams, of Dublin, would take a position with the paper and other well-known national papers. While he was working in Atlanta, Gladstone became close friends with Margaret Mitchell, who used his demeanor and character as the model for her legendary character, Rhett Butler, in “Gone With the Wind.”
For more than five decades, Ida Williams, a free-lance writer of the utmost quality, was a frequent contributor of newspaper articles for the Atlanta Constitution and Journal, the Macon News and Telegraph, the Tifton Gazette, the New York Times, and the Douglas Enterprise.
And, then there were the magazine articles, and many of them. Her stories appeared in
Georgia Magazine, the Georgia Historical Society Quarterly, the NEA Journal, the Mentor. And the self-explanatory Correct English and Correct Eating Magazine.
Miss Ida Belle’s degrees looked like those of a university. She graduated with an AB degree from Tift College in Forsyth, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Georgia. Miss Williams also studied at the University of Tennessee, Columbia University, and Emory University.
Ida Belle’s resume was long and filled with noteworthy achievements. She taught school in primary and secondary schools in Georgia, including an all-too-short stint in Dublin from 1910 to 1914. In her youth, she attended school in Dublin, while she lived with her aunt, Mrs. G.H. Williams. Ida Belle often returned to Dublin to visit family and friends.
Ida Belle was listed at the top of her class at Dublin High School in 1901. For her outstanding record, Williams was awarded as the Top Junior at Monroe Female College (Tift College) in 1905.
Miss Williams also taught college students. In all, Miss Ida Belle stood at the head of a classroom for fifty-six years sharing her vast knowledge of English, history, and life. During her half-century-plus career, Miss Williams taught in Soperton, Wrightsville, Swainsboro, Statesboro, Tifton, Dublin, Sylvania, Cox College, Winthrop College, Anderson College, South Georgia College, Norman College, and Birdwood College. And the list didn’t stop there. She taught classes in Sunday School and when the state told her that she was too old to teach in 1969, the eighty-two-year-old teacher taught willing students out of her home. Miss Ida retired several times. Her retirements were often short. She simply could not resist the urge to be in the classroom.
Miss Ida Belle was somewhat of a historian. She compiled the seminal “History of Tift County” in 1945. Williams joined the Georgia Society of Historical Research and served as President and Vice President of that organization. Beyond the state of Georgia, Miss Williams served as President of the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In 1958, the foundation bestowed a major award for her outstanding writing.
The Freedoms Foundation is an American non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian educational organization, founded in 1949. The foundation’s mission is to educate students and teachers, inspiring them to preserve and advance American freedoms and demonstrate civic responsibility. The foundation is located in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
By the way, when asked, Ida Belle would gladly play the organ in church.
The Pioneer,” published by Tifton High School, Tifton, Georgia on October 2, 1940, stated, “Ida Belle was very proficient in Journalism. Miss Williams has won many prizes in that field. Her feature stories have appeared in some of the best magazines and newspapers in the country. Only recently the New York Times carried one of her stories. Her letter about Will Rogers won a prize in the Atlanta Constitution contest a few years ago. This summer Miss Williams's feature about Indian Springs won a prize in the State Park Writer’s Contest. In 1936 her plot won for her a scholarship to the Richard Burton School of Creative Writing.” (Tifton Gazette, Sept. 20, 2023.)
Williams’ achievements led to her selection of a Whose Who of Whose Who. She was cited in Who’s Who American Education, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in The South, The Dictionary of American Biography, and Directory of British and American Writers.
Among her many memberships in literary and historical associations, Miss Ida Belle was a member of The National League of American Women, Georgia Writers Association, Georgia Historical Society, Delta Kappa Gamma, Theta Omega, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
After her death on October 31, 1970, the citizens of Swainsboro, established the Ida Belle Williams Book Club in her honor.
Her indomitable spirit, with an unquenched thirst for education, lies in much-deserved peace in the family plot in the Swainsboro City Cemetery.
P.S. As you grade papers in your heavenly classroom, please excuse any incorrect grammar. After all, I may have made a least one mistake. I read that you enjoyed correcting the grammar of evening news television journalists. I suspect you had your red pencil out every time you read a newspaper too.
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