SANTA ANA : Teacher’s Generosity Survives Her as Gift

Although Grace Alberts died earlier this year, her generosity and concern for students have survived her. A few weeks ago, Alberts’ estate quietly donated $50,000 to the Santa Ana Unified School District, where she taught for almost 40 years before retiring in 1971.

“School was her life,” said John Bennett, assistant superintendent for elementary education. Each child “was special and she went out of her way to give that special love and attention to each,” Bennett said.

How the donation will be used has not been decided yet, said Bennett, who was principal of Roosevelt Elementary School when Alberts taught her final year there.

Acquaintances say the donation from her estate seems fitting for the brown-haired Chicago native, who always referred to pupils as her “children.”

“Teaching was her life and she always enjoyed it,” recalled Vern Stevens, 60, who had known her since he was 5 years old. “She never had any children of her own. I think she looked at (her students) as her family all the time she was teaching.”

After Alberts moved to Santa Ana with her family when she was 10, she lived on an orange grove near Grand and Washington avenues and walked to school every day. She never drove a car even after she became a teacher. When it rained, she took a taxi.

Shortly after graduating from UCLA, Alberts began teaching first grade at Roosevelt Elementary in 1931. Her salary was $1,275 a year.

“She was full of fun,” said Joan Alberts, Grace’s sister-in-law who lives in Alhambra. “She always tried to interest young girls to go into the teaching profession. When she went to the bank, she might tell the (teller) there, ‘You should give up this and become a teacher.’ ”

Alberts loved to travel and visited Guatemala, Hawaii and Canada. In Guatemala, Joan Alberts recalled, her sister-in-law toured an impoverished school where children had few books and no sports equipment. When she returned, she said, she sent the school her old pictures, lesson plans and a supply of baseballs and kick balls that she bought with her own money.

At home it was the same. When the local orange crops were meager, she paid her family’s taxes despite her limited teacher’s salary. During World War II, Alberts moonlighted for the USO, helping to entertain the troops at dances. On occasion, she invited soldiers to her home for home-cooked meals.