Della Rosenberg

Della Rosenberg passed to her eternal rest on March 14, 2017 in Starke Florida

BY CLIFF SMELLEY

Staff Writer

For once, Della Rosenberg was speechless. Well, almost.

Bradford High School was celebrating its 100th anniversary, and Rosenberg was chosen as the Teacher of the Century. She said it was the only time her students had ever pulled anything over on her.

“I did not know,” she said. “I was completely — almost — speechless.”

The former teacher and guidance counselor at BHS was very outspoken during her career. She said she knew if she ever lost her job, her parents would feed her. Therefore, she never hesitated about speaking her mind in sticking up for her students and doing what she thought would best prepare them for success after school.

Rosenberg, who taught business for 24 years before serving as guidance counselor, expected a lot from her students. She was also very strict. One day, a female student showed up for class wearing a blouse that was too low cut for Rosenberg’s liking.

“I gave her two safety pins and told her to go to the restroom and take care of it, or she could call her mother and have her bring her another blouse,” Rosenberg said.

That student probably resented her, along with a lot of other students, Rosenberg said. As it was, there was no middle ground. Students either liked Rosenberg, or they didn’t.

“My students either worshipped the ground I walked on — and thought I hung the moon and the stars — or they hated my guts because I was so rough on the,” Rosenberg said, “but they also knew I was fair.”

Rosenberg believed in treating everyone alike, much like her father did.

***

Sam Rosenberg, after moving back to Starke from Plant City, ran a new used-furniture business. Della Rosenberg said her father didn’t distinguish people by what color they were, what kind of hair they had or whatever other characteristics they possessed.

“My father treated all customers alike,” Rosenberg said. “People were people.”

Her father also loved children.

The family lived in Starke before moving to Plant City when Rosenberg was 5. She was one of three children, but there was almost a fourth child in the family. Rosenberg guessed she must have been 3 at the time when her father came home with an unwanted baby that was given to him by a carnival worker in town.

“He adopted the baby and named it Alex,” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg said her father told her mother, “Fannie, I brought you a baby.”

The 3-month-old baby had jaundice. Fannie Rosenberg addressed her husband as “Samuel,” which she called him when she wanted his undivided attention, and told him she didn’t want the sick baby in the house with their two daughters. Sam told Fannie to take Alex to an elderly widow in town so she could take care of him until he got well. Then Alex could return to the Rosenberg home.

Unfortunately, Alex died at 9 months.

Children were Sam Rosenberg’s first love, followed by animals. The family lived on 20 acres in Plant City. Della Rosenberg said her family had almost every animal imaginable, including cats, dogs, canaries, rabbits and chickens.

“When I was little, I had white mice,” Rosenberg said. “They would rock to the left and right to keep up with the music when we played records or played the radio.”

She added that the cats weren’t allowed to eat her mice.

Rosenberg said her father’s animals made an impression on other children.

“The children in the community grew well acquainted with two monkeys we had at different times,” she said. “(Sam) had Pedro, and then later he had Charlie. The monkeys wore a little collar, and it would be harnessed to Teddy, (Sam’s) favorite dog.”

Rosenberg and her father shared a love of animals as well as a love of saving things.

“I’m a pack mouse just like my dad,” Rosenberg said. “I save everything.”

Just recently, Rosenberg was going through her belongings when she came across meal tickets from the officer’s mess at Camp Blanding. Rosenberg, after starting out teaching in Plant City, taught military correspondence at Blanding, beginning in 1940

***

Rosenberg taught at Blanding with two other teachers. They taught military correspondence, typing, accounting, shorthand and office practice eight hours a day. The teachers also wrote their own textbook on military correspondence.

Later, Rosenberg worked at the post office at Blanding, which she described as “one big place,” and then worked at the USO in Starke.

In the late 1940s, Rosenberg began teaching at BHS. She left nothing uncovered that would help her students down the line. She even taught girls about makeup and told them what they should wear when they went to work.

“I threw everything at them, but I felt like I had to,” Rosenberg said. “A lot of these youngsters were the first child (in their family) to graduate from high school.”

Many students had never had the opportunity to travel to Jacksonville, let alone outside of the state. Rosenberg took care of that. She would take a group of students who had never been outside of Florida on Saturday bus trips to Georgia.

“Most of the time, it was just a little filling station,” Rosenberg said. “We’d have Cokes and crackers. Then we’d stop somewhere else and get a sandwich or have something to eat. They got out of the bus, and they’d walk around a little. They’d been out of the state of Florida.”

Rosenberg knew the personnel supervisors for Prudential in Jacksonville and Southern Bell in Jacksonville and Gainesville. She said those people would hire all the students she’d send their way. Nationwide Insurance in Gainesville was another company that saw value in Rosenberg’s students.

“They took every student I would send them,” she said. “Many of them became supervisors.”

Rosenberg encouraged students to take advantage of opportunities available in the military and with companies such as Seaboard and Coastline Railroad, DuPont, General Motors and Ford. She did her best to prepare her students to compete with other students and to do well at major universities. Rosenberg said her students would go to the University of Florida and Florida State University and be put in advanced classes. In fact, one UF professor remarked about the number of Starke students that wound up in those classes.

Well, the tone of the remark wasn’t flattering. That was a mistake.

***

A former student of Rosenberg’s called her one day. The student was attending class at UF shen the professor made the disparaging remark about the “Starke wonders.” Rosenberg made a call to UF (she knew several of the administrators and professors). The professor later apologized to the student in front of the class.

“You may step on my toes, but you don’t step on my children’s toes,” Rosenberg said.

When representatives of business schools went to BHS to recruit students, many required students to pay so much in advance in order to be enrolled. Rosenberg didn’t think that was fair. One of her students did just that, went to the school and decided, after two or three days, that he didn’t like it. He returned home, but the school wouldn’t refund his money.

Rosenberg told her students to never pay any money in advance until they found out if they liked the school or not. One business school representative went to BHS Principal Charles S. Partin and told him how hard it was to get along with that “awful, little woman” upstairs. Partin later told Rosenberg of the incident, informing her that he replied by saying it would be wonderful if all the BHS teachers were like Rosenberg.

She was simply looking out for the best interests of her students. Rosenberg even made her students promise her they would save their money once they began working.

“I used to make them promise me that when they started working, after six months on the job they would not blow everything they made on food, movies and clothes,” she said. “That they’d learn to save a little for a ‘special fun’ fund for a fun trip that would take them farther than the border of Georgia.”

Rosenberg gave so much advice to her students that when she became guidance counselor, only the job title was new.

“When I became guidance counselor, the kids told me they were glad they made me legal because I had been doing it all these years,” she said.

Arrangements under the direction of Hardage-Giddens Oaklawn Chapel, Jacksonville, FL.