EVERYDAY HERO Gloria Countryman

Gloria Countryman has been giving back to the Fairfield community her entire life, from her early days as a farm girl to today spending her retirement serving several nonprofit organizations.

Countryman attended country school for six years before coming to Fairfield for junior high and later high school. She dedicated herself to teaching, starting with a couple of years teaching fifth grade before finding her groove in second grade where she spent 34 years before retiring from the Fairfield Community School District in 2008.

Countryman's early years in the one-room schoolhouse sparked a passion later in life to preserve that building, which was moved to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. She leads programs at the schoolhouse every year during the Greater Jefferson County Fair, where she organizes projects for kids.

She took the lead in obtaining grants and donations to replace the roof on the schoolhouse, too.

A local teacher named Druzilla F. Clark spent her first few years of teaching in that building. A donor who had Clark as a teacher gave money to create a foundation in her name. The foundation gives money to first year teachers in the Fairfield and Cardinal school districts. Although Countryman never had Clark as a teacher, she did meet her, and can understand how she left such a great impression on the anonymous donor.

For the past five years, Countryman has served on the foundation's board of directors and is its incoming chair.

Countryman is active in the First United Methodist Church in Fairfield, where she is a lay leader. Her major undertaking of late has been her work with the Carnegie Historical Museum Foundation, which funds capital projects at the museum including recent renovations like a new elevator that will open soon and a plan to replace the front steps and sidewalk leading to the entrance.

- Andy Hallman