St. John Catholic School graduate, teacher gets first alumni award
RUSSELLVILLE — Junior Vega, a third-grade teacher at St. John Catholic School in Russellville, practically had to be pulled away from her volunteer duties at the Harvest Fest Bazaar to receive an award.
The 71-year-old Vega, a veteran teacher, received the first Distinguished Alumni Award given by the St. John Catholic School Alumni Association.
“I was selling tickets, and Mr. [Mark] Tyler and a third-grade teacher walked up. He said, ‘See those people on the stage?’ I said, ‘Some of them I went to school with.’”
Vega was distracted — she said she was trying to make change.
“Somebody bought $5 worth of tickets with $100,”
she said.
Vega said Tyler told her, “We’re going to walk up there now, Junior.”
“I said, ‘Oh, no.’ It was a total surprise. Some of the children that night said, ‘We’ve known about it for two weeks,’” she said. “I guess I’m so busy with the children and teaching that I don’t pay attention.”
Even after all these years — going on 47 — she immerses herself in her teaching. One day when she was reading Tales of a Fourth
Grade Nothing to her students, they were all laughing so much that another teacher looked in Vega’s classroom to see what they were doing. The other teacher remarked that maybe she and her students should join Vega’s class.
“I’m excited every day about going to school,” Vega said. “When I get there, I love it.”
Vega grew up in Russellville, and in 1955 graduated from eighth grade at St. John Catholic School. Her father, the late Craig Bailey, was an attorney, a pilot and a flight instructor at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. Vega was supposed to be a boy, she said, and her name was going to be Craig Bailey Jr. She said her father would tell his friends, “When Junior comes, we’re going to do so and so.”
When Vega was born, she was named Sara Ellen, but her father’s friends kept calling her Junior, and it stuck. She said even the nuns in school called her Junior when she was growing up.
Vega’s father died in a car accident when she was 10.
“I wanted to be like Daddy,” she said. Vega attended Arkansas Tech for a year, but there weren’t any female pre-law students at the university then. She transferred to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where she attended two more years and graduated with a degree in English.
Vega said she really didn’t know what she was going to do, but there were lots of notices in her dormitory advertising for teachers.
“There was a shortage of teachers then — you could get what they called an emergency certificate,” she said. Vega took a job in Wilson because it paid a little bit more than the other schools. She lived in a “teacherage,” a house with other teachers, and they shared a bathroom. At 19, she was younger than the other teachers by about 10 years, she said.
Vega taught seventh and eighth grades for a year at Wilson, then moved to West Memphis, where the priest at St. Michael’s Catholic School asked her to teach second grade.
“I said, ‘ Second grade? I don’t think I can teach second grade.’”
However, she observed a second-grade teacher and decided she could.
“I thought, ‘ This is so much fun; I love this,’” she said.
Vega earned a master’s degree in education from Memphis State University and taught in West Memphis for 24 years.
“The teachers, everyone there, worked so well together, and it was just a wonderful experience. You saw children in kindergarten through eighth grade; it was just like a family,” she said.
Vega and her husband, Raymond, moved back to Russellville, but she said there was no opening for a teacher at the school. About a week before school started, the principal of St. John called her and told her there was an opening in fourth grade.
“I had loved, loved second grade, but fourth grade was really awesome because we did so much more in social studies and writing. I loved the connection between the writing and literature.”
When the economy slowed down, so did the enrollment, Vega said. The priest at the time said he was not going to close the school; he was going to hang in. Classes were combined, Vega said, and she taught two grades together.
Enrollment at the school is now back up to 108, Vega said.
“This is the first year since that time that we have a classroom for each grade,” she said.
She teaches all academic subjects, and she particularly enjoys the literature, she said.
Vega said there are many advantages to teaching at a private school. Teachers don’t have to adhere to changing programs, such as Common Core.
“We do the Saxon math; it’s Common-Core based. We don’t teach the test at all, but we have the same standards,” she said. Vega said the Arch Ford Education Service Cooperative in Plumerville and the Russellville School District are “so good about sharing resources,” such as authors and speakers.
“Our parish is so wonderful,” she said. “If we want something, we get whatever we want. We don’t ever want too much.”
Tyler praised Vega’s teaching skills.
“She is excellent at language and reading. She’s good at the old skills — reading, writing and arithmetic,” Tyler said. “She’s just a strong teacher. She’s like a mother figure to them, or a grandmother figure to them. The kids love her; the parents love her.”
Not only that, Tyler said, but he called Vega “an outstanding person, a Christian person.”
“I have a really sweet class; they’re just so kind to each other,” Vega said. “One of the great things about teaching — Christ is the reason for this school. The children bring you their worries and concerns, and you can pray together, and you can talk about it.”
Vega said she is ready for summer vacation each year, but about three weeks into it, she’s ready to get back in the classroom. Receiving an award from the school she attended and has taught in is special, she said.
“I am so humbled, I guess, and I was proud — I was. It’s like I came full circle. I started at St. John. When I left St. Michael’s, it was like leaving home to go home. Then, thankfully, I got the job at St. John Catholic School,” she said.
Vega’s 96-year-old mother, Margaret Ellen Mobley, lives in Russellville. Vega said her mother is becoming forgetful and is cared for by nurses.
“I took the award over; I took it to show it to her,” Vega said. “I said, ‘ Mama, since Dad died, if you hadn’t worked so hard for me to go, to keep us all in St. John’s, I’d never have gotten this.’ She kind of smiled. When I left later, I was going to get the award, and she said, ‘ Can it stay here awhile?’ And I put it in the window. That was the most wonderful thing.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 3270370 or tkeith@arkansas online.com.