An artist’s purpose in creating art is to pay homage to the subject of their work. This goal isn’t always easy to achieve, but with enough effort, a person can make an image that connects with people in a way that is unique to them. Someone who epitomizes this is Suzy Morris, who is currently working through her 51st year of teaching.

Before Morris became a teacher, or even graduated from high school, she was the Miss Fluvanna of 1959. At the time, she was a sophomore, and as Miss Fluvanna she appeared at events such as a parade, a horse show, and the Dogwood Festival. “It was fun. A new experience,” she said, noting that today’s Miss Fluvannas also participate in a variety of community events, including charities and other types of volunteerism. “It’s about the total person,” she said.

Morris began her career in teaching in November of 1965. During that time, women usually had jobs as nurses, secretaries, or teachers, and Morris took all of her preferences into consideration when choosing a career. “I liked people, and there were several things [that] I thought about,” she said. Morris had also considered a career in commercial art, but she decided to teach instead.

She went to college at William and Mary, and after graduating was asked to teach 4th and 5th grade at Columbia District School. Her first job was difficult, “but everything worked out and we got through that year fine,” she said. Afterwards, a job opened up in what is now known as “the old high school.” Morris has also taught at the middle school as well as the high school and the elementary school, but most of her time has been spent teaching at the high school.

Over the years, Morris has taught a variety of classes and worked in many different places. The classes she’s taught include Foreign Language Exploratory, Spanish, Biology, Earth Science, and Ecology. Another area she has been involved in is transportation, working with bus drivers and other people who transported students. “It was a rewarding job,” she said. Next, Morris went back to the classroom, where she has continued to teach for decades.

For an individual to keep choosing to come back to teaching year after year for so long is astounding to many, but for Morris it wasn’t a difficult decision. She described the experience of teaching as being “kind of addictive. You get addicted to it and it’s also sort of therapeutic in a way that it gives you a routine, it challenges you, and it involves you with a variety of ages, of personalities, [and] of people.”

After retiring from teaching full-time, you might think Morris would be tired of being in the classroom. But she still substitutes regularly, including a recent long-term sub position. “I still feel like I have something to give,” Morris said. “You see how things have changed since when I grew up, and through the early years of teaching. You would hope that some things would remain the same and that you can give [students] some positive models on interacting with each other, [having] respect for each other, and [an] open view of society and tolerance,” she added.

Yet Morris’ life hasn’t been all about teaching. She has raised five children, and all of them have careers working with young people. She and her husband made it their goal to attend every event that their children participated in, from football to band and horse shows to art shows, even if “this involved traveling thirteen hours to out-of-state games,” said Morris.

Morris has had many notable accomplishments during her career, and she described herself as being “kind of a renaissance woman.” When she started teaching, teachers weren’t allowed to use sick leave as maternity leave, but Morris helped get that changed. She was also the first woman to run for Board of Supervisors in 1999, and she initiated the first student foreign exchange programs in the 1970s. Though not a first, the following words from Morris also speak of lifelong accomplishment. “[I’m] proud to be one of the native Fluvannians left and will always be a true and avid Fluco!”

As she’s continued to teach, Morris has continued to learn. “As you age and deal with more people and have more life experiences, you [become] more patient and realize that perhaps there’s a reason sometimes to why someone might be having a bad day. You have to realize that you win some and you lose some,” she explained. Another lesson that she’s learned is that of change. “Student populations change, society changes, and we have to realize that and be adaptable. However, we can still keep and try to model values such as respect, patience, integrity, and empathy,” she said.

As to who taught her such important life lessons, for Morris, that person was her father. She described him as very well-educated, an artist, a farmer, and as someone who always took time to be with her. He taught her about the importance of taking care of the environment, and “he was thoughtful, a perfect example of honesty and integrity. A person who cared about people,” she said.

Morris’ most recent substitute assignment has been a long-term position teaching Cosmetology and Barbering for Kathryn Wilkerson. “The assignment reinforced the concept that everyone can learn, and I concluded that I was not yet too old to learn new things or to try to convince students that one does not just jump in and do nails and cut hair,” she said. Indeed, cosmetology students must first learn many facts before they get to actually work on hair. Learning how to communicate well and follow the rules and regulations that exist in the trade are just two basic steps The students must take in this CTE class before they’re ready to start cutting hair and painting nails..

In the future, Morris hopes to “retire” from substituting and go back to painting watercolors. She would like to make illustrations and hopefully be published. Writing books about the life lessons that animals can give is also something that she enjoys, so hopefully sometime in the near future she will be able to add one more accomplishment to an already accomplished career.