School honors veteran volunteer
Published: May 25, 2005
Students at C.F. Rowley Elementary School celebrated the 100th birthday of volunteer Louella Holland Ranager with 100 construction-paper candles, a time line of 100 years of inventions and a listing of the 18 presidents who have served during Ranager’s lifetime.
Ranager, who celebrated her 100th birthday May 17, has been a volunteer tutor at the school for the past 15 years. She tutored students in reading one-to-one and in small groups, Principal Elizabeth Winslow said.
Ranager, who was born in Lucedale, Miss., also volunteered at the school in the 1950s, said Freda Labat, her daughter and a teacher at Rowley.
As a young woman, Ranager attended a normal school, a school for training teachers, Labat said. She taught full time for one year, she said. Ranager said she and her husband, Gaines Ranager, moved to New Orleans when he was stationed there during World War II, then moved to Chalmette in the 1950s.
Gaines Ranager died in 1990, she said.
“I went to school at Rowley,” Labat said. “Mother used to substitute,” then volunteered in the school cafeteria.
When Labat became a teacher at Rowley 15 years ago, her mother began to volunteer regularly, at least twice a week.
Winslow said Ranager “was volunteering before I came as principal” six years ago. That’s when the school had been newly rebuilt on the site of the previous Rowley school in Chalmette.
She has volunteered a little less this year, Winslow said, but she still is one of a small group of faithful volunteers.
“Her dedication and her positive spirit are contagious,” Winslow said.
Every class gathered Tuesday afternoon in the school cafeteria to honor Ranager with a program that included giant birthday cards, verses, songs and things in hundreds, such as 100 repetitions of 10 exercises.
School Board member Herman Bonnette presented Ranager with a proclamation from the St. Bernard Parish School Board thanking her for her many hours tutoring struggling students.
One class highlighted the events of 1905, when Ranager was born. Einstein published the first part of his theory on special relativity, Popsicles were first produced, and Vicks developed a cold ointment.
Ranager also recalled things from her past.
“The teacher had at least two classes in her room,” and some students would study while she taught others, she said.
Most children walked to school, and on cold days they gathered around a wood stove to warm their hands, she said.
She also learned the Golden Rule and “found that trying to live that verse . . . has made my life richer.”
“I appreciate what they’ve done,” Ranager said after the program. “The children behaved so well.”
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