Janalee Coyle was born in 1941 in Michigan, the daughter of Lee and Margaret (Knisel) Coyle. In 1950, Janalee was living with her parents and younger brother Wayne in Royal Oak, Oakland County, Michigan. Her father was employed as a production engineer for an auto body builder. Janalee went to Birmingham High School in Birmingham, Michigan, where she was a member of the school’s band. Janalee was married in 1962 to Paul Gary Shippell, according to this announcement from the Detroit Free Press: “In a double ring ceremony Janalee Coyle and Paul Gary Shippell were married Saturday evening, Dec. 15, at First Presbyterian Church, Farmington. The bride, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lee K. Coyle, of Bloomfield Hills, wore a white satin gown with lace insets. Mr. Shippell is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Dale C. Johnson, of Farmington. The newlyweds will reside in Royal Oak.”
Before 1972, Janalee and Paul were divorced, and Janalee was married a second time to Robert Lee Barrick, a native of Illinois. They had a daughter, Patricia, who was born in 1972. In 1974, when Robert’s father William Barrick died in Decatur, Illinois; Robert, Janalee and Patricia were living in Lansing, Michigan. In 1980, when Janalee’s mother Margaret Coyle passed away, the Barricks were living in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. I met Mrs. Barrick in the fall of 1984, when I began the sixth grade at Avondale Middle School. She was my mathematics teacher.
According to my sixth-grade schedule, Mrs. Barrick taught eighth grade math for two hours each day, and sixth grade math for three hours. I recall her classroom was completely unadorned – bare concrete block walls, painted a particularly disgusting yellow-green color, probably whatever the construction company could get cheaply when the building was built in 1951. [It was built then as a high school and became a middle school when the new high school was built in 1970.] I remember her as a quiet, undemanding instructor, and my time in her classroom as silent, boring and mostly wasted. A few of us would go on to Pre-Algebra the next year and were basically marking time in sixth grade practicing the multiplication table and doing what seemed like endless long division problems as busy work. I’m sure she was only following the district mathematics curriculum, but as I recall she did very little to make anything interesting at all. While I did not decide to become a math teacher or even consider it until after high school graduation, Mrs. Barrick’s teaching style probably subconsciously influenced my decision in early adulthood. I had a few very, very good math teachers in school, one very bad one (in high school - twice), and several indifferent ones– once I decided I wanted to teach mathematics, I knew I could be a good one. I think I was; I hope I was. One thing I do recall of Mrs. Barrick, however: she was insistent upon teaching us to interpret the vocabulary of mathematical word problems. It was mainly in her class that I learned to translate a word problem into mathematical symbols to solve it.
I didn’t know it at the time (in fact I was today years old when I discovered this), but in September 1984, at the same time I was beginning sixth grade math in Mrs. Barrick’s class, she was the Avondale Education Association union president. The school year had already begun when the teachers ratified their contract. From the Rochester Eccentric, 6 September 1984: “Although she wouldn’t divulge the vote, union president Janalee Barrick said there ‘wasn’t much opposition. It was not unanimous, but it was close,’ she said. …Barrick called the agreement fair. She said it would improve the wage standing of Avondale teachers. ‘We’ll move from 23rd to 19th in salary among the 28 Oakland County districts,’ she said.”
Mrs. Barrick hand-wrote the information on my report card for her class; she signed the Michigan Mathematics League certificate of merit “for superior achievement in the 6th grade contest”; and on my 1985 yearbook she wrote: “Wendy, you are a beautiful person. I have enjoyed working with you this year. J. Barrick” I imagine she wrote similar things for all the students who asked her to sign. I know she was still teaching at Avondale Middle School through the 1986-1987 school year, as she appears on the staff page in my yearbook from that year.
Detroit Free Press, 6 October 1990: “Janalee (Coyle) Barrick, 49, of Birmingham, executive director of the Michigan Education Association in the Woodhaven, Utica and Gibraltar school districts, died of cancer Thursday at Harper Hospital in Detroit. Ms. Barrick graduated from Michigan State University in 1965. She previously had taught in the Avondale School District and was a member of the Forest Lake Country Club. She is survived by her daughter, Patricia; father, Lee Coyle, and two brothers. Services will be at 1 p.m. today at the William Sullivan & Son Funeral Home, 705 W. Eleven Mile, Royal Oak. Burial will be in Grand Lawn Cemetery in Detroit. Memorial contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society, 6701 Harrison, Garden City 48135.”
Just over five years after I was in her classroom, Mrs. Barrick died. It is important to note these three things: (1) her obituary uses the title “Ms.” and does not list her (ex-)husband as a survivor, (2) her daughter Patricia was about my age, and (3) the cause of Janalee’s death was cancer, from which she was probably already suffering when she was my teacher. When she passed away, her daughter was likely a senior in high school. The death of Janalee Barrick would have left a huge hole in Patricia’s life, not to mention the three school districts for whom she was the executive director of the MEA, her father and brothers, and even her ex-husband. I had no idea that she had died so young, while I was still in high school. Nor did I have any idea she had taken on so much responsibility in her personal and professional life.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: “each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own – populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness – an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”
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