Coplay native, now 106, imparted life skills to generations of students

L. Kathryn Fogel, 106, spent half of her life — 53 years — in Coplay’s Lincoln School. She was a student there for eight years, then returned as a teacher for 45 years. Nearly 2,000 children passed through her kindergarten and second-grade classrooms before she retired in 1967. By Joanna Poncavage of The Morning Call

“She was the teacher you never forget,” says former student Sarah Fox of Coplay. Fogel enjoyed teaching and could relate to her students, says Fox, a retired nurse.

Born in 1902, Fogel lived most her life in a house on Third Street in Coplay, except for a few years in her grandparents’ house a few blocks away. For the past 25 years, she’s lived in Phoebe Terrace retirement community in Allentown.

Fogel’s life has unfolded in long, uninterrupted stretches, representing an era in which many people stayed in the same job and didn’t move far from the house they were born in.

As a child, she walked to the two-story Lincoln School with her older brother, Ralph. After graduating from high school and Cumberland Valley State Normal School, now Shippensburg University, she returned to Lincoln as a second-grade teacher at a starting annual salary of $900.

After 24 years with 7-year-olds, Fogel decided to try something new —kindergarten — and taught two sessions of 25 children daily, morning and afternoon, for the next 21 school years. “I enjoyed that very much,” she says. “Every day was different.”

For Kathryn Fogel ’22, Old Main, as it looks here, was the hub of campus.

She preferred teaching arithmetic “because there were so many games to play.” She played “store” with her students and taught them numbers with songs like “One, two, buckle my shoe.”

Teaching reading wasn’t as much fun, she remembers. “It was drill, drill, drill.” But she never slapped any of her students on their hands the way she’d been slapped in second grade for misspelling words. “That was terrible,” she says.

Students were different then. “They thought teacher was right, and that was that,” says Fogel.

Many of her former students — the youngest are now approaching 50 — have kept in touch with Christmas cards and notes. But the teacher’s pet award went to the one who surprised her with a check for $100 when she turned 100. “I almost fell over,” she says. “It floored me.”

Built in 1892 at Cherry and Chestnut streets, the Lincoln School once stood where Giant grocery’s gas station is today. In 1977, Coplay Borough Council agreed to sell the vacant school to grocery chain Laneco, and the school was demolished around 1980.

“None of us liked that it was taken down,” says Fogel. “We thought it was still usable, and it really was something that Coplay should have kept. But I suppose they needed the money for something.” She still has a brick from the building as a memento.

The borough has changed in other ways, too. “When I taught school in Coplay, I knew everybody,” says Fogel. “Now I don’t know half, and there are a lot of new homes.”

When she wasn’t busy with school, Fogel volunteered. She put in hours at the public library, started a Girl Scout troop and, during World War II, compiled News from Coplay and sent it to the borough’s soldiers once a month. She was treasurer of the Coplay Recreation and Welfare Association, an organization to help those in need of food or medical equipment. She was historian for Coplay’s Centennial in 1969. And she was active in her church, First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua.

Taking advantage of her summer vacations, Fogel traveled often. She likes to reminisce about her trip to the Holy Land. “We had hotel rooms in Jerusalem and went out from there every day,” she says, including to the Sea of Galilee for a church service on a boat. She also took tours to Europe, Alaska, Hawaii, Spain, Portugal, Morocco and the Caribbean. One of her favorite experiences was a five-day Atlantic crossing on the Queen Elizabeth II, with a return trip on the supersonic Concorde that took less than 3 hours.

Sixteen years ago, for her 90th birthday, Fogel took a hot air balloon ride across the Lehigh Valley. There was some landing trouble, and Fogel had to jump out of the basket into the arms of rescuers.

“I jumped very carefully,” she says, “but I enjoyed it all.”

Fogel stays in contact with 30 nieces and nephews, including Nancy Novogratz of Northampton. “She’s always been a great influence in our lives. She kept us on our manners, and encouraged us in school,” says Novogratz, 76.

A panoramic view of campus as it looked while Kathryn was a student here. Familiar to many of our older alumni is this photo of Solomon’s Temple on the east side of Old Main. Kathryn’s room would have been very much like the one shown here from the same time period.

Fogel also keeps a busy schedule with Phoebe activities or personal appointments, only recently resigning as chairwoman of a committee she organized to give gifts to other residents. She enjoys large-print books from Phoebe’s library, and prefers “a good love story with a good ending.” She doesn’t like mysteries. “I’ll read the end first,” she says.

Fogel recently began using a walker instead of a cane to be steadier on her feet, but she says her aches and pains aren’t too bad. “I don’t take many pills,” she says, “and I have a good doctor.”

The record holder for the oldest U.S. woman ever was Sarah Knauss, who, coincidentally, was a Phoebe Home resident when she died in 1999 at age 119. Fogel is among 10 current residents of the Phoebe communities who are 100 or older, and one of two 106-year-olds. She is Phoebe’s oldest independent living resident.

She attributes her longevity to a good life. “I was a spoiled kid,” she says. “I never liked cooking or housework. I did what I liked to do, and that was it.”

She was engaged once, but decided marriage wasn’t for her. Instead, after her mother died, she lived alone until 1984, when the man who took care of her large yard said he wouldn’t any more. “When things become too difficult,” she says, “it’s better to do something else.”

If she could live her life over, she says, she wouldn’t change a thing.

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