Bertha Mabry always wanted to teach children. But after her youngest son was born with mental disabilities, she longed to improve the educational resources for children like him.
“She’d been a teacher for 10 years before he was born,” said her eldest son, Douglas Mabry, who lives in Carrollton. “And after he was born, her whole focus shifted. She went back to school.”
Years after she’d received her undergraduate degree from Tennessee Wesleyan, she earned a master’s degree in mental retardation from the University of Georgia. She also traveled to Lund, Sweden, to study mental disabilities in children. She and her husband, Hagood Mabry, eventually built Happiness Hill School for Retarded Children, which was in Cobb County, their daughter said.
“Her life plan was to help children,” said Martha Ray of Marietta. “But she worked so hard for the retarded after my brother was born.”
Bertha Chastain Mabry of Marietta died Thursday after a brief period of declining health. She was 90. A funeral was held Monday at Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church. She was buried next to her husband, who died in 1992. Marietta Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.
Born in Cherokee County, in the area that is now Canton, Mabry graduated from high school when she was 15. She finished Tennessee Wesleyan when she was 18 and took her first teaching job when she was 19.
“Her first teaching job was in a one-room schoolhouse in Bartow County,” Ray said of her mother. “In that class was a boy her age. On her first day, the kids told her they’d run off three teachers, and they were planning to run her off too.”
Mabry’s first day of teaching included getting nailed into the outhouse, Ray said, but her mother was unfazed.
“She told the boy that it would take somebody bigger than him to run her off,” Mabry’s daughter said. “And at the time I don’t think mother was but 90 pounds.”
Mabry’s teaching career took her to several schools, including Pine Forest, Mount View, Mount Bethel and Bells Ferry. She retired from Blackwell Elementary in 1984, her children said.
“I think she was most proud of the attention that she was able to bring to the issue of educating retarded children,” Douglas Mabry said. “There just wasn’t a lot of talk about educating retarded children at the time, and she didn’t believe in just putting them in the back of a classroom.”
In addition to her daughter and son, Mabry is survived by another son, Sanford Mabry of Marietta; sister, Blanche Sullivan of Powder Springs; six grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
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