Mildred L. Buckley Hipsley, who taught in the Baltimore city and county school systems, died Saturday of congestive heart failure at Dulaney-Towson Health Care Center. The longtime resident of East Joppa Road was 95.
She retired in 1963 from the city school system where she had taught kindergarten and elementary classes since 1945.
She began her career in the early 1920s, teaching in a two-room schoolhouse on Falls Road near Bare Hills, where her sister, Gertrude Buckley, was the school's other teacher and its principal.
She later taught at Stoneleigh Elementary School in the county where she was also a practice teacher for teachers in training. She retired in 1940 when her daughter was born and returned to teaching five years later in the city school system.
"She loved her kids and never had to raise her voice to get her students to do what she asked," said her daughter, Patricia Hipsley Klass Evans of Lutherville. "You could hear other teachers' voices when you walked into school but never hers.
"Since she taught in a poor neighborhood, she was always taking the clothes and shoes that I had outgrown down there to help out the needy children. She was always concerned about them."
Mrs. Hipsley was born and reared in Mount Washington. Her father, George Buckley, was a carriage maker and blacksmith whose shop was on Falls Road near Smith Avenue.
ZTC "She always said that she went from being a little child during the days of horse and buggies and streetcars to the age of airplanes and space travel as an adult," Mrs. Evans said.
Mrs. Hipsley was a 1920 graduate of Western High School and earned her teaching certificate from what is now Towson State ** University in 1922.
In 1937, she married Alfred Hipsley, a farmer who later worked for the Baltimore County Board of Education. He died in 1976.
After her husband's death, she studied art and painted mostly in oils.
"She was only able to paint about three years when her eyesight began failing, but in that short time, she managed to paint many beautiful landscapes," Mrs. Evans said. One of her paintings was displayed at the Eubie Blake Cultural Center in 1993.
Services were set for 11 a.m. today at the Ruck Towson Funeral Home, 1050 York Road.
Other survivors include a grandson and granddaughter and three great-grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to Havenwood Presbyterian Church, 100 E. Ridgely Road, Timonium 21093, where Mrs. Hipsley was a member for many years.