| Eva Royce (CHS Faculty) |
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by Ed Dooley
Eva Royce was a stern, no-nonsense, but deeply caring
teacher who spoke French fluently and precisely, and Miss
Royce expected – no, demanded – that we should do so also.
Woe to anyone who was not prepared to conjugate the verbs in
the daily lesson or who didn’t know the vocabulary for the day.
And, oh, the dreaded dictée, a long dictation in French that we
had to write out correctly, with every accent mark in its place.
This was her favorite way to test us and it was definitely “old
school.” Her icy stare and quick correction could make grown
men (much less boys) tremble. When we got it wrong, she
would shake her head in despair and stare at us through her
large, thick glasses.
There were stories about Miss Royce, and we were convinced
they were true. One was that she had been a nun in France
before coming to the United States to teach French, and that
explained her strictness, precision, and serious looks. Another
was that she had served in the French Resistance during WII.
In fact, I did not know until she died in 1994 that she had been
born not in France but in Brooklyn, New York, where her father
was considered the greatest Honore de Balzac scholar in the
United States. She had studied several years in France,
graduated from Mount Holyoke, and studied at the University of
Chicago and at Yale University with a John Hay Fellowship.
She came to Tucson in 1946 and taught at Tucson High School
before transferring to Catalina. Not surprisingly, she was the
faculty advisor to the National Honor Society at CHS. Deep
down inside she was a much softer person than her public
persona suggested, and she faithfully kept up with her students
years after they had conjugated their last French verb.
Eva Royce was a stern, no-nonsense, but deeply caring
teacher who spoke French fluently and precisely, and Miss
Royce expected – no, demanded – that we should do so also.
Woe to anyone who was not prepared to conjugate the verbs in
the daily lesson or who didn’t know the vocabulary for the day.
And, oh, the dreaded dictée, a long dictation in French that we
had to write out correctly, with every accent mark in its place.
This was her favorite way to test us and it was definitely “old
school.” Her icy stare and quick correction could make grown
men (much less boys) tremble. When we got it wrong, she
would shake her head in despair and stare at us through her
large, thick glasses.
There were stories about Miss Royce, and we were convinced
they were true. One was that she had been a nun in France
before coming to the United States to teach French, and that
explained her strictness, precision, and serious looks. Another
was that she had served in the French Resistance during WII.
In fact, I did not know until she died in 1994 that she had been
born not in France but in Brooklyn, New York, where her father
was considered the greatest Honore de Balzac scholar in the
United States. She had studied several years in France,
graduated from Mount Holyoke, and studied at the University of
Chicago and at Yale University with a John Hay Fellowship.
She came to Tucson in 1946 and taught at Tucson High School
before transferring to Catalina. Not surprisingly, she was the
faculty advisor to the National Honor Society at CHS. Deep
down inside she was a much softer person than her public
persona suggested, and she faithfully kept up with her students
years after they had conjugated their last French verb.
