Lucille Ella Sheets

Our mother, Lucille Ella Sheets, was born on August 22nd, 1937, in Portland, Oregon. She was the middle child of three siblings, joining her older sister Judith, and followed by her brother, Arthur.  She was a third-generation Oregonian whose great-grandparents came to Oregon on covered wagons and participated in the establishment of Portland.  One of her great-grandfathers served as the Chief of Police, one as an editor of the Oregonian, and others became local business leaders. Our mother was proud of her family.  She loved to tell us the story of playing in the pool that her paternal grandfather had built by hand in his southwest Portland property.  He would later donate this land to the city to become Marshall Park.  She also enjoyed spending time with her maternal grandparents as they were building their home on the Oregon Coast, near Yachats, a home that she and our father would later restore so that it could be kept in the family.  She had many such fond memories of her youth, including family reunions and her summers spent at Methodist youth camps, where she was actively involved. She attended Vestal and Glencoe Elementary Schools and Washington High School with her sister and brother, and here, certainly, she developed her first love of learning.   This passion would guide her for the rest of her life.      

In 1959, she graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Elementary Education, and later returned to earn her Master’s Degree.  Here, she fulfilled her childhood dream to pursue a career and degree, often struggling against the expectations for women of her day.  At PSU, Lucille met the love of her life, Donald Sheets, and they married on June 17th, 1961.  Lucille and Donald, both educators, pursued their careers with enthusiasm while raising us, their two daughters.

Lucille worked for Portland Public Schools for 37 years, first at Rigler and then Jason Lee Elementary.  Lucille was an inspiring teacher.  She believed passionately in getting students outside of the classroom and into the real world.  With her students, she explored the community through travel, and created change along the way. In the late 1970’s she launched a campaign with her students to save the beacon on Rocky butte.  Around the same time, she also campaigned successfully to make chocolate milk a school lunch option, after her students conducted research on its benefits.

Our mother loved the idea of world fairs; she loved to have her students staged yearly “mock” world fairs at school.  Eventually, she became interested in the idea of holding a 2005 World’s Fair in Portland to commemorate the 1905 Lewis and Clark World’s Fair.  She pursued the goal with passionate enthusiasm, taking students around the Northwest to visit past fair sites, mayors, and civic planners.  Her multi-year vision and planning led to a bill passed in the State Senate to fund a feasibility study.  We fondly remember going to Salem with our mom and her class.  They were all so proud as they met with Governor Kitzhaber to see the bill signed. 

Our mother also loved to see her students shine through drama and music.  She directed many musicals, including her original Christmas musical, “Save Our Santa” written with her musical partner,  Fevrel Pratt,  and produced with him and my father (on stage crew ) at Madison High School for many years.  This was a grand production that ended with a Santa Land on stage that children in the audience were invited to walk through.  Our mother loved to see children smile.

Ultimately, she was a creative and dynamic person who was always searching for ways to improve the world.  She founded Location Learning, a non-profit educational institute, and taught at PSU in the Division of Continuing Education sharing her ideas about getting children out to experience the real world and to discover their own power in making changes in that world.   After the birth of their first grandchild our parents decided to retire, but our mother never let go of her passion for educating children.  She loved her three grandchildren, Donny, Lucy, and O’Dell, and wrote music for them to sing and helped them stage small plays at home to entertain the family.  Along with the two of us, our mother started Creative Parent, a business dedicated to creative parenting ideas and materials. She really never stopped teaching.

We lost this beautiful woman on September 22, 2008, just one month after her celebrating her 70th birthday, ending a year long battle to fight pancreatic cancer.   Though she left this world with a mind full of ideas and dreams that she had yet to put into action, she taught all of us what it is to be ethical, responsible, and inspired citizens of the world and her work will be carried on.