TEACHER'S CORNER: MEET SISTER BERTHA O'NEILL WHO SERVES AS ST. VINCENT HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARIAN IN PERRYVILLE

PERRYVILLE - As a librarian, Sister Bertha O'Neill enjoys helping students to utilize the resources available to them at St. Vincent High School in Perryville.

"I believe that their knowledge of how to use the library will be useful to them throughout their lives," she said.

O'Neill has been a member of the Daughters of Charity for 43 years.

"I chose the Daughters because I wanted to serve God in a way that he wanted me to use the talents and abilities He had given me," she said.

O'Neill did not enter the community with the idea of becoming a teacher.

Her first assignments were as a bookkeeper in a hospital and in two social agencies. Later, she was an assistant administrator and education director in a maternity home.

"All of this experience has helped me in my role as teacher and librarian," O'Neill said.

"Then the community assigned me to a school in Dallas, Tex. I spent 10 happy years there as a business teacher for Mexican-American high school students. I was able to prepare them with skills that would enable them to get good jobs.

"When the assignment came, I responded willingly," she said.

"I have had many memorable years teaching high school students. The letters and telephone visits I have with former students always bring joy and a prayer of thanksgiving that I have had some small influence in their lives."

O'Neill's 24 years of classroom teaching also included schools in Price, Utah, and New Orleans, La. She has been librarian at St. Vincent for the last eight years.

"I believe one of the greatest challenges in education today is motivating our young people to use their God-given talents and abilities," O'Neill said, "to be the very best person they can be in spite of the materialistic and secularistic society in which they live."

She has a bachelor's degree from Marillac College in St. Louis and a master's degree from Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn.

Her recreational activities include walking, crafts and knitting/crocheting, reading and working crossword puzzles. She also enjoys making items for the various fund raisers in the parish.