Windsor
“I didn’t want to think about it,” Bailor said in a phone interview from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. “I didn’t advertise that I was a Holocaust survivor. I just kept my mouth shut.”
He probably would have “kept his mouth shut” had he not met Beth Dutton in the early 1980s.
They were students at Brooklyn College, Bailor, then 50, Dutton, 58 at the time, and became close friends.
Their friendship took on a new and enduring meaning when Dutton learned of Bailor’s story of hardship, suffering, survival and loss after the Nazis forced the Russians out of Eastern Poland in 1941.
“I had invited everyone in our class to a picnic and somehow I slipped up,” said Bailor, explaining that he had said something about his childhood in Poland during World War II. “(Beth) said, ‘Can we sit down and talk about that.’ ”
“She started taping our conversations and of course I had my breakdowns, especially talking about my sister,” said Bailor, who was just 12 at the time of the Nazi invasion. “She was beaten badly and she and my mother were killed and dumped in a mass grave.”
Dutton, who died Jan. 28 at 93, taped numerous conversations with Bailor and the result was a 1995 book, Night People: A Story of The Holocaust.
“She did a wonderful job,” Bailor said.
The narrative tells how Bailor’s village was occupied first by the Russians, who treated the Jews well, and later by the Nazis, whose brutality had no limits. “It was hell,” he said.
Dutton’s extensive knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust did not begin and end with her book about Bailor.
When she taught at Windsor High School, Dutton, who was Catholic, developed a curriculum on the Holocaust. It was used by many schools and earned her an award from the National Education Association. She gave seminars on the curriculum and taught at the Vermont International Summer Institute for Youth on Holocaust Studies at Vermont College and the University of Vermont. Dutton also received The Anti-Defamation League’s Teacher Incentive Award in 1999 and attended seminars in Poland and Israel of Holocaust survivors.
“I think what really got her into teaching the Holocaust is the book she wrote,” said one of Dutton’s two daughters, Barbara Barbour, who lives in Hartland. “The book coupled with visits to concentration camps in Germany are what really set her on that path.”
In 1998, Dutton completed a year as a Mandel Teacher Fellow at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., where she was also invited to speak.
“When people would ask me, who is the best source on the Holocaust, I would tell them, you go see Beth Dutton,” Bailor said. “She became an expert. She was very good.”
Dutton’s commitment to telling of the horrors of the Holocaust and teaching it to others was not a singular act of speaking for those who history mistreated. Her life was defined by a sense of compassion toward others and doing what she believed was right.
Whether being arrested, along with actor Alan Alda, according to her daughter, for protesting against nuclear weapons or inviting a fellow teacher, who had knee surgery and could not climb stairs, to share lunch with her, Dutton senses seemed to always be on the alert for helping others or trying to make the world a better place.
“We would share rice cakes and talk about politics,” remembered Penny Armstrong, who taught with Dutton at Windsor High School. “It was great fun. I had every ounce of respect for her.”
Born Anna Beth Dutton in 1922 in Meriden, Conn., on the same farm settled by her great-grandparents, Dutton was small in stature with a gentle voice that belied an inner determination she exhibited nearly all of her 93 years, often on behalf of social causes or the disenfranchised.
She came from very strong stock, Barbour said.
“Her grandmother came over from Ireland as a teenager and became the first female sexton of a cemetery in the country.”
At Kent State University she met her first husband Bob, who would later join the Army and the family lived on bases in Germany, San Diego and Alabama.
In San Diego, she spoke on behalf of Native Americans and in Germany, five years later, Dutton started and directed a program similar to the Fresh Air Fund in the United States, helping children from the cities spend a couple of weeks with families in the country. She also taught English to German businessmen.
“It seems like wherever we went, there was a cause she stood up for,” said her daughter.
After 25 years in Brooklyn, Dutton moved to the Upper Valley in the 1980s and became a teacher when most are ready to step into retirement.
“She moved up here after he last husband died and went back to college. She applied (to Johnson State College) when she was 62 and put her birthday down as 8-22-22,” recalled Barbour. “They sent it back to her and said there must be a mistake in the year.”
The decision to get a degree and move into another profession may have felt like a bold and uncertain step for many, but for Dutton it made perfect sense to continue learning about the world and trying to make an impact.
“She was always a busy woman and wanted to do it,” Barbour said. “She thought it would be a good career and it turned out to be a wonderful career.”
Dutton earned her undergraduate degree in secondary education from Johnson State College and her master’s from Castleton State.
In 1987, at age 64, she joined the faculty at Windsor High School and when she retired 20 years later at age 84, she made history as the oldest retiree in Vermont’s public school system, Barbour said. Dutton first taught English but then switched to teaching civics and the Holocaust.
“I was there for 26 years and she was there for 20, so we taught together for those 20 years until she retired in 2007,” said her daughter, who taught at one floor above her mother.
Dutton was intern teaching under Armstrong at Windsor and soon they became colleagues and close friends.
“I always think of her as a force of nature,” said Armstrong, former chair of the English department. “She was deeply involved in teaching, her students, working on the student newspaper. She had amazing energy.”
Perhaps Dutton’s energy and determination is best exemplified by a story her daughter remembers that is not directly related to her classroom but one that nonetheless shows how committed she was to her students.
Remaining at home to convalesce after breaking a leg was never a consideration for Dutton, even though she taught on the second floor and there was no elevator.
“She would come in with an apron on, slide it around to cover her backside then she would sit down and go up the stairs that way,” said Barbour. “Nothing stopped her.”
And she did more than just teach, serving on the Vermont National Education Association for 10 years where she organized and chaired its Civil Rights Committee.
Dutton had some notable achievements as a teacher including having her students starte a recycling program in town and proposing that community service should be part of the civics course.
“Community service was a big thing for her,” Barbour said. “She started bringing her students to the nursing home for birthday parties every month. She was a strong supporter of community service and giving back and she tried to instill that in her children, her students. They were like children to her.”
In an interview in the late 1990s, Dutton said the Socially Concerned Student Group would do everything from shoveling snow off cars, to doing yard work, reading to a sick boy or girl or keeping an elderly person company.
“Give kids something good to do and they will run with it,” Dutton said in the interview.
Her students, working with Windsor lawmakers, also developed the state youth restorative justice board and the bill was signed by Gov. Howard Dean in the high school library.
Respectful, always, is how Armstrong remembers her colleague.
“She was very much interested in human rights and seeing people treated fairly,” Armstrong said. But she wasn’t preachy about it. Beth had the ability to influence young people and not everyone has that.”
Dutton wasn’t all about hard work.
“She had a very, very serious and compassionate side but there was a fun side to her as well,” said Barbour, recalling the time she “played” as a member of teachers’ air band at the high school.
Her writing — she published several books — also showed a lighter side. Dutton was co-author of three books each titled, The Little Black Book — A Guide to the 100 Most Eligible Men. There were editions for Washington D.C., New York City and Beverly Hills, published from 1981 to 1983.
“She has a lot of fun writing those,” her daughter said.
Dutton was humbled by her gifts of a long and healthy life and the opportunity to serve and help others.
At a church mission, not many years before Dutton died, Barbour said her mother asked a priest about her wonderful life.
“ ‘After all God went through, why me, why has He blessed me,’ ” her daughter recalled her asking. “The priest just about broke down in tears and said, ‘because you are the most compassionate person I have ever met.’ ”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
