Teacher was St. Stephen’s mainstay
Over 50 years, Kathryn Respess was known for patience, enthusiasm.
In the past five decades, St. Stephen’s Episcopal School has gone through a lot of changes, but there has been one constant: Kathryn Respess.
Respess, who worked under eight different headmasters and was known for her quirky end-of-the-school-year celebrations, died Thursday at age 75 after having taught history and social studies at St. Stephen’s for 50 years.
The Houston native and alumna of Rice University taught up until her death. She moved to the St. Stephen’s campus in 1965 with her husband, John Respess, who died last year, to begin her teaching career.
She was a decorated teacher, winning the 1990 Texas Committee for the Humanities’ Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award. She also was a well-known environmentalist both on the St. Stephen’s campus and in the Austin area, helping start the Wild BasinWilderness Preserve — which is now owned by St. Edward’s University and Travis County and managed by the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve.
Respess, who went by her middle name, Kathryn, instead of her given first name, Esther, had “a kind of patient generosity when dealing with students,” said Laura Camp, 67, a longtime colleague.
“She required students to do real schoolwork, but the students that struggled,
she would have endless patience with them,” Camp said, recalling how Respess would always be in the conference center at the school, working with students who needed her.
Brenda Lindfors, who took middle school social studies with Respess in 1975, said her former teacher had an incredible intellectual curiosity — and an end-of-year celebration that equaled it in curiousness.
Respess had a tradition of riding around in her golf cart, donning a Viking helmet and blaringWagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” right before exams began. The annual voyage quickly became a student favorite, Lindfors said.
“It was always kind of a secret on campus, like, ‘When is she going to ride?’ And then she would come over the hill and the kids just loved it,” said Lindfors, who graduated from St. Stephen’s in 1980 and now works as the vice president of marketing and communication for the Texas branch of Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Camp said she doesn’t know exactly when this tradition of the yearly ride began, but the motivation for it wasn’t too complicated.
“She just lovedWagner, that’s all it was,” Camp said. “Kids are throwing water balloons at each other and she thought, ‘Why can’t I have some fun?’”
Respess was such a part of St. Stephen’s, Lindfors said, that when Lindfors’ daughter, a recent graduate of the school, was picking electives before her senior year, she made a point of taking a class with Respess.
“She felt like she couldn’t graduate from St. Stephen’s without having Ms. Respess,” Lindfors said.