“It’s never felt like a job”
“It’s never felt like a job”
For math instructor Marietta Johnson and Lower School music teacher Mary Ann Livengood, the two longest-tenured women at the school (Johnson 46, Livengood 48 years), educating young men has always been a passion.
In 1974, math instructor Marietta Johnson received a phone call that would change the course of her life. It may seem strange that Johnson ended up teaching math at the school for over 40 years after graduating from Stanford with a B.A. in sociology, but, through a series of fortunate events, Johnson found her passion.
Years after leaving college, Johnson was busy caring for her four young children, one of whom started attending St. Mark’s in the fifth grade. Johnson had always enjoyed teaching, so when her cousin was overwhelmed with work tutoring Johnson’s child’s classmates, Johnson decided to take on a few students and tutor them.
“I enjoy math a lot more than I did sociology,” Johnson said. “My cousin said, ‘you’re a natural with people. Just come on, take a student.’ I don’t have a math degree, I don’t have an education degree, but I felt like this was a gift from the Lord.”
Johnson became a popular tutor for Middle School math students, such that, when the school’s current fifth-grade math teacher became pregnant, the teacher asked the school to allow her to leave.
“She was a little bit past the age for having children, so it was such a big deal,” Johnson said. “She went to the school and said, ‘I really would like to enjoy this new life that has come to me,’ so the school called me because I was tutoring everybody else’s children.”
This was an opportunity Johnson had been waiting for. In fact, she was thinking about an opportunity like this when the school came calling.
“I was seeing my children were growing,” Johnson said, “and I thought ‘I’ve got to do something so that I can be with my own children after school, and I wanted to be free after school when they were free. I was tutoring everybody else’s children, so I had just said, ‘God, please just work something out.’ I can tell you the chair I was sitting in, where I was when I got that telephone call. ‘Would you consider coming and working at St. Mark’s for three periods a day?’”
Sitting in her yellow bedroom chair that fateful evening, listening to the school official offer her the job, Johnson couldn’t believe her luck. It would allow her to teach during the day and see her children after school, the time she had been tutoring instead.
“I was so excited. It didn’t take me long to talk it over with my husband and say yes,” Johnson said. “I didn’t even have an interview. I guess they knew me from tutoring, but I was just so excited.”
Johnson, a Hockaday alumna, joined the expanding number of female faculty members here.
“By the time I came in, there were some female faculty, and the school was opening up to more female faculty,” Johnson said. “I never felt discriminated against as a woman. It has been a very smooth transition [for more women being incorporated into the faculty].”
The head of the Math Department at the time, Bill McNab, had taught Johnson at Hockaday for four years, so he welcomed her with open arms.
“He was a visionary of math education and made a huge difference in the state of Texas,” Johnson said. “And he went from Hockaday to St. Mark’s and was a mentor to me when I first started.”
Johnson has seen the school aflame. She’s seen the school change its colors from purple and gold to blue and gold. She’s seen the Foxworth family bring a lion cub to football games. She’s seen the school tear down their cafeteria building and eat outside for an entire school year.
Johnson has become one of the longest-tenured members of the school’s community.
“St. Mark’s has been a huge part of my life, and I’m dedicated to the school and its values,” Johnson said. “Are we perfect? No. But we have that spirit of always wanting to get better and not rest on our laurels.”
Lower School music teacher Mary Ann Livengood — known as Mary Ann Sharp at the time — heard about a job opportunity at the school in 1972, right after her graduation from SMU.
“It was April of my senior year,” Livengood said, “and we were all sitting around the green room. If you’ve ever watched that old show called Home Improvement, the mother on that show, Patricia Richardson, was sitting in the green room, and we were all sitting having coffee. And she said, ‘I just heard about an opening for a music job at this private school in town.’”
That private school was at 10600 Preston Rd., and with her prior connections, Livengood secured an interview and the job in short order.
“Knowing [former choirmaster] Jim Livengood was at St. Mark’s and having seen him around SMU throughout the years,” Livengood said, “I called him that evening. He told me there were 12 candidates and they were deciding the next day. He asked me to come by in the morning and bring my resume. I met him the next morning. I had interviews and tours of the campus, and three days later, I had the job.”
Having lived near campus and attended John J. Pershing Elementary School, a mere 0.8 miles away while she was growing up, the school wasn’t a foreign place to Livengood, but a job at the school wasn’t always in the cards.
“I lived on Desco Drive right off Preston. We would drive by St. Mark’s all the time, and I looked at it out the car window. I knew it was a private boys school, but never in my wildest thoughts did I think I would be teaching there. I wasn’t worried about the all-boys [aspect] at all. In fact, I thought that sounded wonderful.”
From picking up mail to getting a cup of coffee, Livengood says the atmosphere was uncomfortable at first, especially as a young female teacher, but she credits her colleagues — namely Jim Livengood — with comforting her on campus.
“The collegial atmosphere — the comments — made me feel very uncomfortable as a young female teacher,” Livengood said. “If I walked into the lounge to get a cup of coffee, I knew I was being looked at a lot. So that was awkward for me, but Mr. Livengood was very helpful. Often I would have to call him and say ‘Come with me because I don’t feel comfortable checking the mail.’”
But in general, Livengood says she didn’t feel mistreated as a woman on campus, and even if her paycheck was lower than her male counterparts, she didn’t teach for the money.
“With the administration and the Fine Arts department,” Livengood said, “I certainly was not being suppressed. I probably was, as far as pay scale, but I never checked on that. I did this because I loved it. Not because of how I was getting paid.”
As Jim continued to help Livengood acclimate — walking with her to the mailroom, grabbing a cup of coffee together, jointly teaching classes — the two started dating and eventually married.
“I started feeling comfortable when Jim and I got married,” Livengood said. “We began dating in 1972, married in 1977 and worked together here at school for 33 years, I sang in his church choirs throughout the Metroplex, and we raised two beautiful girls.”
The two worked together in nearly everything pertaining to the choir, with one teaching the young choristers and the other accompanying on the organ.
“I was always very active with the choir,” Livengood said. “Being a professional pianist and vocalist and a lifelong member of choirs, it was natural that I leaned toward the choral department. Training the young singers and then working with them all the way through to graduation was the best part of my job. Mr. Livengood and I were a great team.”
Jim passed away in 2004, leaving Livengood with a void. In the three years after Jim’s death, Livengood says she didn’t feel like she was making progress in the grieving process, driving her to a sudden resignation in February 2008.
“It was just a real struggle,” Livengood said, “and I resigned. In May, I went into [former Headmaster Arnie Holtberg]’s office. We were just talking. I was thanking him for being such a supportive headmaster and he looked at me and said, ‘Well, it's not too late if you want to change your mind.’ I looked at him and went, ‘That's not fair. It was so hard for me to decide to leave.’ And he said, ‘Well, you've got two days,’ so I went home and talked to my girls and decided to stay. I’ve never regretted that decision.”
Reflecting on her time at 10600 Preston Rd. — her job interview, her time with the choir and her husband, her near resignation — Livengood keeps coming back to something she heard during her first year on the job.
“On that Friday morning interview, I met with the head of the Lower School — her name was Mrs. Chloe Gursh — and I had a really nice conversation with her,” Livengood said. “After I got the job, probably the next year, she actually told me that one of the things she noticed or felt about me was that I would stay around for a while. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that is really funny. What kind of karma did I give off?’ I guess it was just a right fit. It's so nice to have a place for 49 years that I’ve wanted to come to every day. I can honestly say it's never really felt like a job.”