Celebrant Pam Meily Vetter


	Celebrating Life Everyone Has A Story...

Born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Diane was the oldest of five children. She was energetic from the start. She would run next door to the John Graham Public Library, check out one book, run home, read the book, run back to the library and check out another book. Through high school, she excelled academically and was active as a performer in musicals like Oklahoma, loving the stage. She graduated from college and went on to Rutger's University where she earned her doctorate. She spent her life teaching students, making a difference in their lives, and telling them they could do anything they dreamed to do. She made everyone believe in themselves. She also stood up for what was right, no matter the consequences. She believed everyone had something to offer the world, everyone had a mission, advising them: Find your mission and get it done. She was a fighter until the end, leaving behind so many amazing gifts. Diane, we miss you and we love you... one day, we will see you again.

Article from articles.Lancasteronline.com

Small stature, giant inspiration

Intelligencer Journal, Published Nov. 17, 2008

By DAVE PIDGEON, Bird's-Eye View, Staff Writer

Voices echoed along Penn Manor High School's hallways Friday. Students buzzed about the football team's upcoming playoff game or grumbled about weekend assignments.

In my imagination, I heard a disciplinary voice among the noisy crowd, ordering students to cease loitering, to tie their shoes, to knock off the kissing.

I visualized a bouncing pouf of light brown hair just over the students' shoulders and then pictured the source of the killjoy message coming into view — the ghost of a short woman like a cannonball on fire barreling through the middle of the crowded hallway.

My dear Dr. Diane Meily, I whispered, and then the specter vanished, escaping back to where I store mental keepsakes from my past.

I went to Penn Manor, my alma mater, Friday to speak about my experiences covering the 2008 election. As I talked before three classes, however, I came to understand how this day was about talking to Dr. Meily, or at least her memory, like a senior delivering an oral report.

Dr. Diane Meily Blount (known as Dr. Meily to her students) taught world history at Penn Manor, her alma mater, for 18 years until in 2004 ovarian cancer proved to be the only thing in this world she couldn't successfully defeat.

"She wanted every student to know just how far they could take their abilities, and if they disciplined themselves they could rise beyond what they thought they could do," said Dr. Meily's longtime friend, Donna Brady, a social-studies teacher at Penn Manor.

Dr. Meily's methods could cause angst as much as inspiration. Barely 5 feet tall, she rose above her stature with a boisterous, animated personality. She could be hell in a pair of pointy blue Dutch clogs. She cracked down on unruly students, but was hardest on those in whom she saw the greatest potential.

"Some students were scared of her at first," Brady said. "Many people found her, at first, challenging, maybe a little intimidating. They knew they would have to put out their best in her class, and that gave kids pause."

During elementary school, I strove for straight A's, but by high school, I'd grown overconfident and lazy. I relied on natural ability to score B's and be satisfied.

Dr. Meily wouldn't forgive me for taking an easy road, and when she finally ensnared me in one of her classes during my senior year, failure was not an option, yet success would not be easily obtained. Like others who consider her a mentor, I realized the more she challenged you the more it was just her brand of tough love.

As much as she was a stickler, she could be a rabble-rouser, too. Dr. Meily was the vicious hall monitor snapping at every minor infraction, but one day she told me she did this because the administration made her work the hallways, an activity she detested, and so to get back at them, she flooded the office with students who had committed inane offenses, such as leaving their shoelaces untied.

And her laugh — she had a giggling, full-bodied laugh that would make her hairdo shake. It served as evidence that behind the fire-breathing exterior was a woman whose soul wasn't half-full or half-empty but running over.

Doctors discovered cancer in Dr. Meily in 2002. But even the prospect of having to fight a fatal disease and the real possibility of death did not intimidate her.

"She treated it almost like a science problem - like, 'OK, this is what the situation is, and this is how I'm going to approach it, and I'm going to do the most aggressive treatment I can,' " Brady said.

Surgery and chemotherapy helped for a while. When she became weaker, she had to cross the massive Penn Manor campus in a wheelchair, a device in which Dr. Meily, with all her vigor, never felt comfortable, according to Brady.

Her health deteriorated, and the cancer returned. Brady said she phoned Dr. Meily at the hospital on her friend's 49th birthday. It was that day on which a mentor to hundreds if not thousands of Penn Manor kids learned her cancer was terminal.

Dr. Meily died in the spring of 2004.

"She wanted to make the most out of every minute, out of every opportunity and every student she met," Brady said. "It was uncompromising."

Dr. Meily is the stern voice of my conscience challenging me, whenever I become satisfied, to do more and to be more. No easy pathways. To be the best writer, you want the toughest editor dicing your material. That's the Dr. Meily way.

If politics shapes our our world, then Dr. Meily would want me to be a journalist living in the middle of it and contributing even a small measure to the great dialogue of our community, state and nation.

My dear Dr. Diane Meily.

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com

Comments:
A beautiful tribute to my sister. I read this via the Internet in California today - and my extended family members and Diane's former students, who live far and wide, are forever grateful. Beautifully written, Mr. Pidgeon! A tribute to your dedication to the written word. As I sit here in tears and my mother is in tears back home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we are smiling through our tears because someone cares enough to remember Diane one more time. We are forever grateful for your delightful descriptions with an honest depiction of her final chapter. Thank you to Donna Brady as well for your support during those final challenges. Cancer was not easy, but Diane lived her life with smiles, trying to make a difference in every breath she had left. A lesson to us all... Thank you again, Pam Meily Vetter

Dr. Meily was a teacher of Mine. I graduated in 1994. Man what a firecracker she was. I will never forget some of the things she taught us that had nothing to do with social studies.. Some of those things were If we rested our heads on our hands we were going to "cause wrinkles". Or if we weren't participating in class she would rush over to the windows and open them, because we were too warm I recall her saying that best learning temperature is 62 degrees. My favorite is when students were unruly she would make them do push ups in the middle of class, I recall a few times she had to get down and do a few push ups to show the students how to do them correctly.

There are two teachers I talk about most and my mom tells me that's because they have impacted my life the most. Unfortunately, Both have fallen victims of Cancer.

One teacher's name was Mr. Hitchcock and he taught at Lincoln Jr. High in Lancaster. I loved that man and I remember seeing him often at Kmart and he always hugged me and asked how my kids were.

The other was Dr. Meily, unfortunately I left Penn Manor and hadn't been back since. I struggled in High School and she never gave up on me. She was absolutely a wonderful teacher and I'm fortunate to say she taught me in 10th grade and again in 12th grade! Mrs. Vetter please know that your sister was/is an Angel and greatly missed.

Meily gone but not forgotten
Bird's-Eye View

Article from articles.Lancasteronline.com

By Dave Pidgeon,

Dr. Meily, revisited

Last week's column focused on the person who had the most profound influence on my career — the late Dr. Diane Meily, social studies teacher at Penn Manor — and the reader response was stupendous.

One of Dr. Meily's family members wrote in to say: "I think of Diane many times every day but sometimes wonder if, after all her hard work, anyone still remembers what a wonderful person and great teacher she was."

Judging by the influx of e-mails this week, Penn Manor alumni and her former colleagues have not forgotten Dr. Meily.

Some students wrote to say they wished they hadn't taken her classes for granted, while others spoke about her influence on their careers.

One former student — now an actress in Hollywood — said she named her dog "Meily" because Dr. Meily was her favorite teacher.

The most poignant e-mail may have been this one from 1998 Penn Manor graduate Ben Coe:

"I remember singing the national anthem in the hall outside of Dr. Meily's class for interrupting another student and doing push-ups in front of that very same class for being (a smart aleck) during a debate. I also remember visiting Penn Manor for the first time after completing basic training (for the Marine Corps) and embracing the woman with tear-filled eyes (who) helped get me there..."

"When I returned home from Iraq, I remember I wanted to see her and share my experience with her, only to find out she had passed away. I was heartbroken. Not so much because I knew I would miss her but that there were others that did not get to know her like you and I did. She was the most feared, but for those of us that really knew her she was the most loved."

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com

Comments:
I received an early morning phone call in California from my mother this morning. With tears in her voice, she said, "Mr. Pidgeon has written a follow-up entitled 'Meily gone but not forgotten.'" Thank you to journalist Dave Pidgeon and the Intelligencer Journal for sharing a follow-up to the original, beautifully written article. Thank you to all of her students as well, for sharing those special moments that made Diane one-of-a-kind. You reminded us of the witty things she used to say and in a way, shared her spirit with us one more time. We are forever grateful. I know Diane would be proud of each one of you. This is what makes Lancaster great... People care. To me, it will always be my home. All my best, Pam Meily Vetter