Indispensible Shegay Vanderpool retires from elementary school

Few have shown the can-do spirit on a sustained basis as well as Shegay Vanderpool.

The career educator, after all, has proved since the early 1970s that she can do just about anything in the classroom, at all grade levels.

Same with the campus music hall. And auditorium.

Not to mention the counseling office.

In baseball parlance, said her longtime friend, retired La Conner Middle School principal Maureen Harlan, Vanderpool is the ultimate utility player – someone versatile and skilled enough to master any position on the diamond.

“Every school,” Harlan told the Weekly News, “should have a Shegay Vanderpool,”

La Conner Schools have had the genuine article for 28 of Vanderpool’s 48 years in education, a long and remarkable run that reached the finish line this spring with her retirement as elementary school counselor and music teacher.

Over the course of her life’s work, Vanderpool notes in sincerely modest tones, she has “taught just about everything.”

She has instructed high school social studies and English classes and been a guidance and academic counselor at the secondary level. In the primary and middle school grades she has counseled and taught music.

And that’s not the half of it, according to Harlan.

“There was a time,” Harlan recalled, “when she taught swimming at the Potlatch RV Park pool at the marina.”

Vanderpool and Harlan collaborated, along with then-Superintendent Tim Bruce, on a series of popular student-community stage plays.

This was after Vanderpool had left education, having previously taught in California and Arizona, to join her husband, Steve, in a business venture in Anacortes.

She worked three weeks at the couple’s clothing store – which seemed a natural fit since Vanderpool’s father had founded several department stores in the western U.S. – before she quit to return to teaching.

“I just missed it so much,” Vanderpool explained.

Seeking a position, she made an appointment with Harlan, offering to fill in as a substitute.

“I told her I would like to help with theater,” said Vanderpool, “and she asked: ‘What do you do?’ I said I could do a little music.”

Harlan didn’t know that Vanderpool had spent part of her youth in Hawaii. Almost as soon as she asked if Vanderpool could play the ukulele she knew the answer.

So, with Bruce’s blessing, 30 ukuleles were ordered and Vanderpool began teaching students and community members how to play the small guitar-like instrument.

The camaraderie developed on stage between the community and the school district provided countless teachable moments and a form of synergy rarely found elsewhere.

“I can still picture Dick Nord playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ at a concert,” said Harlan, who found a kindred soul likewise inviting residents to take part in school productions.

“She has been such a valuable resource to La Conner students and their families,” Harlan said of Vanderpool. “For me, she has been such a great friend. She and I could always sit down and collaborate one-on-one.”

Vanderpool said the student-community plays will always be among the favorite memories – of which there are too many to count – from her years as staff.

“The most rewarding part of my career here,” she said, “has been being part of such a wonderful community with amazing kids.”

When school bells toll next fall, it will mark the first time in nearly a half-century that Vanderpool will not be on campus. She plans to catch up with family and friends between here and Arizona.

“I’ll take the year off,” she said, “and after that it’ll be ‘to be determined.’”