Long-time Newnan High School math teacher Mary Cronbaugh died Friday, September 7, 2007. She was 79.

Cronbaugh - who retired from the Coweta County School System in 2004 – was a beloved teacher not only to many Newnan High students, but to generations of students. She taught high school higher math for 53 years, including 34 years at Newnan High.

Cronbaugh was born in Flat River, Missouri, August 28, 1928. She graduated and attended high school in Bonne Terre, Missouri, and earned her Bachelor’s in mathematics in 1950 from Central Methodist College, in Fayette, Missouri.

An avid traveler throughout her life, Cronbaugh’s earlier teaching career reflected her desire to see the world. For 19 years before coming to Newnan she taught in Missouri high schools (1950-52 in Polo, Missouri and 1952-57 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri), taught for three years in Illinois, three years in Cobb County, Georgia, four years in Idaho, one year in Australia (for the South Australia Department Of Education), and one year in New Guinea (Port Moresby High School in Tapua, New Guinea).

Superintendent Robert Lee hired Cronbaugh to teach math at Newnan High in 1969, the year that he was hired by the school board to lead the Coweta County School System. She had worked before with Dr. Lee at South Cobb High School when he became principal in 1962.

“She and I worked closely together at South Cobb, to handle a very difficult opening of the school that year. She was one of the most hard-working, dedicated people I’ve worked with - very loyal to people that she knew and worked with and to her students.”

Cronbaugh left Cobb to teach in the American West, and later in the South Pacific, but Dr. Lee saw her once more in the mid-1960s. “I was working on my Doctorate in Colorado, and she had seen that I was in the area. She came by to say hello, and ended up dropping her cats off with me so she could shop.”

Later, when Dr. Lee became the Superintendent of Coweta County Schools, in 1969, he offered Cronbaugh a position teaching math at Newnan High. “We have been good friends for years since then,” said Lee. “I’ve never known a better, more loyal person and better teacher. She was a no-nonsense person, and she expected her students to work hard, but she would do anything for them.”

Once at Newnan, the high school and community became home for her. She worked first with Principal Holmes Cunningham and later with Principal Alan Wood.

“Mary Cronbaugh was a master teacher who taught generations of students how to build bridges over rivers that have not yet even run in their lives,’ said Wood. “Her belief was that learning helps one understand that the most exalted things in life belong to all of us if we strive hard enough.”

“She helped students to find the outer edges of their own imagination through the orderly logic of math,” said Wood. “More importantly, Mary’s ineffably high standards of professionalism cannot be duplicated and they will continue to resonate in the halls of Newnan High School for many years to come.”

Mary Cronbaugh ended her career at Newnan High in 2004, when Dr. Steve Barker was principal of the school. “Without question she was the most amazing staff member I have worked with in my career, in her dedication to teaching students on an individual basis every single day of the year,” said Barker. “I never went by her room that she wasn’t working with students, and she was just as concerned with every student, on the last day as, I’m sure, she had been on her first day as a teacher.”

Even after she retired, she returned to Newnan High regularly as a tutor. “She came at least three days a week, tutoring students that teachers would send to her. So though she retired, she kept coming for at least the next three years. She loved education and really loved young people,” said Barker.

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