Dolores Wilson, 2024

Dolores Mathilda Kuhl was born in 1929 in Michigan, the daughter of Alvin Emil Kuhl and Mary “Mamie” Frances (Adrosky) Kuhl. In 1930, she was living with her parents and four older siblings in Dearborn, Wayne County, Michigan, where her father was a toolmaker in an automobile parts factory and her mother was a homemaker. When the 1940 census was taken, the Kuhl family (including children Clemeth, Floyd, Dougald, Ilene and younger sister Jacqueline in addition to Dolores) was living in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. Dolores, aged 10 years, had completed the fifth grade. Her mother was still housekeeping, and her father was still employed as a toolmaker in the auto industry.

In 1947, Dolores’ older brother Donald Harold Kuhl was killed in an auto accident. He was only twenty years old. He had been working as a junior accountant for the Lybrand, Ross and Montgomery firm; he was living in Detroit at the time, but the accident happened in Port Huron. In 1950, the Kuhls were enumerated in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan; Dolores, aged 20 years, was a student at Mercy College – now known as University of Detroit Mercy, a private Catholic university.

 

Dolores earned a Bachelor of Science degree in medical technology, and another Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, biology and education, both from Mercy College. She later went on to earn a master’s degree in education from Wayne State University in Detroit. She was married to Francis Mathew David Wilson between 1950 and 1955, and had four children. In 1983, six years before I met her, she won a Michigan Science Teacher award:

 

Detroit Free Press, 3 May 1983: “Mrs. Dolores Wilson, of Avondale High School in Auburn Heights, won the Michigan Science Teacher award for her creative teaching techniques that actively engage students in the learning of chemistry and health sciences. She will be awarded $500 and her school will be given $500 to be used in her name to buy science teaching materials or for continuing education in science or science education for the faculty.”

 

Detroit Free Press: 3 May 1983: “Dolores Wilson takes science beyond school. By Dolly Katz, Free Press Medical Writer. Last Thursday morning the 24 students in Dolores Kuhl Wilson’s high school medical careers class were bent over microscopes, doing blood counts on blood they had taken from each other’s fingers. “Kim, you matched it up wrong – I don’t have anemia,” one student called to another. “You had more lymphocytes than PMNs, I’m sorry to tell you,” another student informed his colleague. Downstairs in the clinic that Wilson and her students opened last year, students – trained in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation – treat minor health problems. Community residents can drop in for free blood pressure, urine and blood tests, all performed by students who keep the medical records in a computer. If any problems crop up, the student clinicians use their intercom to contact Wilson, who is a licensed medical technologist, emergency medical technician and first aid instructor. As Wilson strolled among her pupils, she was frequently interrupted by young people who popped in to settle details of their next day’s annual health carnival. The carnival, another of Wilson’s ideas, introduces third graders to concepts of safety and goo health through games constructed and run by her students. Wilson donates the $200 for prizes and construction materials. In the 13 years since she came to Avondale High School in Oakland County, Wilson, 53, the winner of this year’s Free Press science teacher competition, has taken science instruction far beyond her classroom walls. About a third of her health careers students work part-time in doctor’s offices, nursing homes, and hospitals, expanding the skills they learn in class. Her clinic and classroom are full of machines that she has bought or received free from hospitals and other industries: centrifuges, densimeters, hematocrit readers. Even her more traditional chemistry classes emphasize problem-solving and student participation. “Don’t trust anything! Test it!” she admonishes her third-period chemistry class. “She’s very intelligent. She knows a lot about (what) seems like everything. She gets so caught up in teaching us that she forgets to do attendance,” says Sam McMechan, a senior in her medical careers class. “She leaves a lot up to you; she doesn’t hover over you. She just gave us two work schedules for April and May and said, ‘follow these.’ You work at your own pace. If you have a question, you ask.” Wilson’s four children, now grown, provided the impetus 14 years ago that led her away from her careers in medical technology, industrial hygiene, and microbiology. “I primarily got into teaching because I wasn’t satisfied with the education my kids were getting, and I thought if you’re going to criticize, you better know what you’re doing,” said Wilson, who has a master’s degree in guidance and counseling in addition to her teaching certificate in chemistry, biology and English. “I found out it’s easy to criticize, and it’s a different story when you’re working.” But she also found out she loved the work. “I just love these kids, I really do,” she said Friday, after supervising 350 elementary and high school students at the health carnival. Then, for emphasis, she repeated: “I love these kids.”

 

I met Mrs. Wilson in the fall of 1989 when I was assigned to her chemistry class my junior year at Avondale High School. At the time (and until today) I had no idea that there was a “medical careers” course offered in our school. I had taken Biology (basically, as far as I can remember, watching my lab partner and dear friend Karen dissect gross things while I tried not to breathe formaldehyde) as a freshman, and Anatomy and Physiology (more of the same, but also we watched The Princess Bride) as a sophomore, and chemistry was the next logical step. Then I took physics my senior year (copy these statements out of the textbook into your notebook and show up for class, you’re golden – but you won’t know any physics). As a freshman at the University of Michigan, in my second semester I took beginning physics and was then compelled to write to the superintendent of schools at Avondale because my education up to that point was sorely lacking in any science background and I was totally at sea – except for chemistry. Because of Mrs. Wilson and those four months of her instruction, I was able to take the chemistry placement test at Michigan and place out of basic chemistry. If I had gone on to take a more science-based curriculum in college, I would have been able to start with organic chemistry. But I didn’t. My degree is in mathematics, and it’s a Bachelor of Arts, not Science. I took astronomy and physics…and then moved on to other things.

 

When I got to Mrs. Wilson’s class, I already had a chip on my shoulder about science, even though I usually did well academically in science classes. Starting in elementary school, my class was at a distinct science disadvantage. I cannot recall a single elementary school teacher who spent any time on science. As I believe I wrote about Mrs. Helferich some months ago, she handed out the science textbook at the beginning of the school year and then collected it from all of us at the end; we never opened it once. Starting in sixth grade at the middle school we all were required to take science – In sixth grade Mr. Wold was beset with discipline problems in our first hour class and literally the only things I remember from that year were that Shawn Long came late to school every single day – eventually the office staff made his mother take him to the classroom door rather than excuse yet another tardy – and Mr. Wold found a note I’d written to a classmate in which I called him a jerk. He pulled me out of reading class two hours later to confront me about it. I can remember his face and nearly every word he said to me, but I cannot remember anything I said. I know I apologized. I hope I said I didn’t mean it, and I’m sure I didn’t. Everything I did through almost all middle school was to try to fit in, everything. It is very likely that someone else wrote it first, and I’m the one who got caught. I wasn’t a fan of his class, and I remember no science I must have learned there, but I don’t think he was a bad teacher. Mr. Deis, our seventh-grade science teacher, was an even better teacher. He was fun and we did a lot of hands-on experiments. He was also later my driver’s education teacher – both in the classroom and the car. Sadly, the only thing I can remember about seventh grade science was the day I had a bad head cold, we were doing some experiment four to a table, and I didn’t notice my nose was dripping until one of my “friends” pointed it out, laughing and encouraging everyone else to laugh, while I rummaged through my bag for a tissue. (Middle school really sucked.) Mr. Manos, our eighth-grade science teacher, didn’t even have a lab classroom (through no fault of his own I’m sure) so we watched a lot of demonstrations that he did on his big bench at the front of the room, but we didn’t get much hands-on time ourselves. Mr. Manos was a veteran of the Vietnam War and had some nerve damage from Agent Orange. None of us knew that at the time; what we did know was that it was important not to sit at the front of the room in the spit zone – but also not at the back of the room. He would hand out worksheets and tests column-by-column, counting out the papers for each column and then licking his thumb and using it to separate them from the pile. So, if you were at the back, you got the wet paper. Poor guy. We were so mean. Anyway. I didn’t come here to write about how bad middle school science was – but! It was. Mrs. Wilson was the only bright spot in my entire science education before college.

 

We learned to balance equations. We learned proper lab procedures. We learned about the scientific method (again, but more). She taught us a lot of cool stuff about specific chemicals. Our course was nowhere near what kids of the same age learn in chemistry classes today, but for the time, it was good. Fortunately, I don’t remember breaking any lab equipment, but every time we did a lab assignment, something got broken by someone. Because we were using Bunsen burners on a somewhat regular basis, Mrs. Wilson demonstrated proper fire extinguisher procedures very early on. And one day (it seems very abrupt and unplanned today, but I’m sure she must have sent home permission slips), she took me and another girl (was it Karen? No one else was really interested enough, I don’t think…) to the Detroit Science Center for the day in her own car. I had never been there before, and we had a great time.

 

Mrs. Wilson’s brother Floyd passed away in November 1989, while she was teaching us to balance chemical equations and presiding over our lab experiments, trying to keep us from breaking too many thermometers and causing havoc with Bunsen burners.

 

The Bradenton Herald, 7 November 1989: “Floyd E. Kuhl, 65, of Bradenton, died Nov. 6 in HCA/LW Blake Hospital. There will be no local visitation. National Cremation Society, Sarasota chapter, is in charge of arrangements. Memorial services will be 10 a.m. Wednesday at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church, 833 Magellan Drive, Sarasota, with the Rev. Martin Flynn officiating. Memorials may be made to the Hospice of Southwest Florida, 406 43^rd St. W., Bradenton, Fla., 34209. Born in Detroit, Mich., Mr. Kuhl came to Bradenton from Flushing, Mich., in 1978. He was an engineer for General Motors for 37 years. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; parents, Alvin and Mary, of Farmington, Mich.; a daughter, Ann M. Roy of Flint; two sons, Paul W., of Bradenton, and Christopher L., of Flint; three sisters, Eline and Jacqueline, both of Dearborn, Mich., and Delores Wilson of Oxford, Mich.; and a grandchild.

 

And then we went on winter break, and when we returned, she was gone. We knew from day one that she intended to retire at the end of the 1989 calendar year, and that the school would hire someone to replace her starting at the beginning of 1990. But when we returned to school that January and she was gone, leaving poor Mrs. Stewart in her place, I felt betrayed in the science department all over again. Mrs. Stewart, who undoubtedly had been told that she had to rule the classroom from day one if she expected to control us at all, was not a bad teacher; she wasn’t really a good one, either. She seemed to take pleasure in putting students on the spot and had us up at the chalkboard all the freaking time. One morning, late spring, near exam time, she had written several chemical equations that needed balancing on the board and was dragging students up two or three at a time to solve them in front of everybody. I had had a mishap that morning when I sat down at my desk and split my favorite baby pink corduroy pants right across the butt. Ann, sitting next to me, knew what was going on because she’d agreed to run to my locker as soon as class was over to get my jacket so I could tie it around my waist to get through the rest of the day. Mrs. Stewart asked me to go up to the board to solve one of the equations, and rather than explain the truth, I just said I didn’t know how to do it. She insisted; so did I. We went back and forth four or five times, and finally Ann just yelled out, “Her pants are split! She doesn’t want to stand up in front of everybody!” Mrs. Stewart let me stay in my seat after that, and she turned red, embarrassed that she’d bullied me, but she wasn’t anywhere near as red as me. I never spoke to her again. I did my work and turned it in, took my exam, and never said another word to her. So, yes, I missed Mrs. Wilson. She’s a real treasure.

 

Less than a year after her retirement, her father passed away:

 

Detroit Free Press, 14 November 1990: “Kuhl, Alvin E., age 94, November 12, 1990. Beloved husband of Mary; dear father of Clemeth (Shirley), Dolores (Frank) Wilson, Eilene, Jacqueline Ciszewski and the late Floyd and Donald; father-in-law of Betty Kuhl; grandfather of 15 and great-grandfather of 15. Funeral service Harry J. Will Trust 100 Funeral Home, 37000 Six Mile Rd., Livonia (E of I-275) Friday at 10 a.m. and St. John Bosco Church at 11. Rosary Thursday at 8 p.m. Visitation Wednesday 6-9 p.m. Thursday 12-4 and 6-9.

 

And then just a few months later, her mother:

 

Detroit Free Press, 13 February 1991: “Kuhl, Mary F., age 94, died Saturday February 9, 1991, in Florida. Beloved wife of the late Alvin. Mother of Clemeth (Shirley), Ellene Kuhl, Dolores (Frank) Wilson, Jacqueline Ciszewski, the late Floyd and Donald. Grandmother of 15; great-grandmother of 17. Mother-in-law of Elizabeth Kuhl. Sister of Mathilda Bannasch, Irene Bronee, Martha Follis, Florence Peel, and the late Clara Reiss, and Norman Adrosky. Funeral services Friday 11:15 a.m. from the Harry J. Will Trust 100 Funeral Home, 37000 Six Mile Rd., Livonia, to St. John Bosco Church at 12 noon. Rosary Thursday 7 p.m. Visitation Wednesday 6-9 p..m. and Thursday 12-4 and 6-9 p.m. Interment Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

 

Mrs. Wilson’s husband Frank died in 1997, when he was only sixty-nine years old. When Mrs. Wilson had her ninety-fifth birthday in 2024, her son David solicited cards and letters from her students; then he later reported how pleased she was to hear from her former students and teaching colleagues. The photograph at the top of this column was taken when she was 94. As far as I know she is still alive and well, living in Oxford, Michigan. Best wishes to you, Mrs. Wilson. Lots of us still miss you and remember you fondly as a woman advancing the causes of science and education.