Mary Beery taught ?kindness with style?

Should a freshman girl go out with boys in cars? “Is this to ‘ride around?’”Most girls like to ride around with boys. More people see them than if they walk. Word gets around that they’ve been “out with a boy.” They feel older. Nevertheless, a freshman is not yet 16 — the minimum age for whoever drives.” What should a seventh-grade boy talk about when he calls up a girl? “When a boy calls up a girl, he should talk about whatever he called her for in the first place. He shouldn’t call unless he does have something to say. He shouldn’t call just to fool around and waste time. Telephones are not for aimless talk. They are for making plans and for obtaining and giving information.”  Information such as this — the points young teens needed to make their way in the world — was dished out during the 1950s and ‘60s by Lima’s own Mary Beery.In fact, so prolific were her etiquette books that Lima’s popular newspaper columnist Hope Strong dubbed her Lima’s most famous author.That’s a fact that could easily be backed up by the five books she wrote, countless magazine articles, and even filmstrips. Her books were used as coursework by schools in 24 states in teaching young people the ins and outs of living in society.A teacher, Miss Beery had written the books to help the young people she worked with daily as they tried to fit into the world around them. As she wrote in the forward of her first book, “Manners Made Easy,” the hope was that the book would “help young people feel secure in social situations.” She dedicated that book her to her own parents, Dr. and Mrs. William Beery.Her desire to write began when she was teaching at Lima’s South High School. The year was 1943, and Miss Beery wanted to teach a course on conduct. That first year it was offered, only three girls enrolled in the class.But Miss Beery believed more students were interested in the subject, and by the next year, her hunch paid off when her classroom was filled with boys and girls eager to learn about social graces.As Miss Beery told the newspaper in 1950, she was “convinced that the teenagers will do what is right, if they know what is right. Many times, students are anti-social because they are covering up for uncertainty.”Although her will was strong to teach the course, the reference material was non-existent. So, Miss Beery began gathering information from magazine articles, interviews, books, and her own personal experience, to share with the students.Encouraged by school administrators, she wrote a course outline and a manuscript for a textbook to use for her conduct class. Continued encouragement led her to submit that manuscript to a publisher. Three years later, the book, “Manners Made Easy” was published by McGraw-Hill.And her handbook for manners was quickly adopted by schools across the nation. In fact, so popular was the tome that her publisher had planned to create five film strips to accompany the course. The technical adviser for those film strips? Mary Beery.More than once, her book was selected among the Top 10 educational books on the market. One year it outsold all other text-films published by McGraw-Hill.Before long, Miss Beery was popular on the lecture circuit. She hosted a local radio program for teens and wrote a column for young people in The Lima News. By 1953, her writing demands took so much of her time, she quit teaching school.Yet she never quit her interest in teenagers. Between 1957 and 1971, Miss Beery had four other teen books published. She once estimated that each of her books took a minimum of two years to research.As times changed, the demand for her books began to diminish. But by that time, Miss Beery had begun a new career, teaching French to students at OSU-Lima. She continued her travels around the world, and spent all of her summers in Paris, where she was always looking for new material for her students.She also spoke to all ages about manners and how to fit into this world. As she told the Van Wert Woman’s Club in 1960, “Everyone should ask themselves, ‘have I grown socially in the last year?’ Manners are a direct reflection of the person, and social growth should keep pace with physical and intellectual growth.”As she told the newspaper in 1979, times may change, but how people treat one another remains the same. “You can’t ever get away from manners — the manner in which you do things. It’s a question of whether the manners are good or bad, or whether a person is considerate of others or not.”Which was the point of her first book. As she wrote in that first chapter, “It is sometimes thought that manners are only for society people. But this is not true. Everyone has manners — good or bad. Since manners can be only as good as you make them, your manners are a direct reflection of yourself. Even people who obtain money and position by birth cannot buy good manners. They can have them only through their own personal efforts. Fortunately, everyone can learn ‘kindness with style.’”