Della Lynch Botner This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. The Sylva Herald and Ruralite - Obituaries: 10/05/00

   www.thesylvaherald.com/obits10 - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/26/2002   Last Visited: 8/26/2002

   Botner, longtime educator, WCU benefactor, dies at 90
   
   Taft Benjamin Botner, 90, of Cullowhee, a longtime educator, retired dean and benefactor of Western Carolina University, died Saturday, Sept. 30, at Mountain Trace Nursing Home after a period of declining health.
   
   Funeral services were held at 11 a.m. Monday, Oct. 2, at Melton-Riddle Funeral Home Chapel. The Rev. Bill Serjak officiated. Burial was in Fairview Memorial Gardens with military honors provided by American Legion Post 104.
   ...
   A native of Kentucky, Botner was born in an Owsley County schoolhouse that had been converted into a home. By age 17, he had become a teacher in the one-room Upper Wolf Creek schoolhouse with 65 pupils. His career in education spanned 48 years, until in 1975, when he retired as dean of WCU's School of Education and Psychology (now known as the College of Education and Allied Professions).
   
   His late wife, Malvery Barker Botner, who died in 1991, taught public school for 34 years, 12 of them at Camp Laboratory School in Cullowhee.
   
   On their 50th wedding anniversary in 1979, the Botners established a scholarship fund that annually provides awards to academically-talented students in elementary education and reading. They also established the Taft Botner Award for Superior Teaching, which has been presented to an outstanding WCU education professor each year since 1982.
   
   Botner ensured his tradition of giving would continue by signing a life estate gift agreement that, upon his death, turns over to the WCU Development Foundation his house and property in Cullowhee. The funds are to support the Taft B. and Malvery Botner Scholarship and Teaching Award Fund, and his efforts to establish an endowed professorship within the College of Education and Psychology.
   
   Botner graduated from high school in Booneville, Ky., and then attended Eastern Kentucky State University. He earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He gained experience in Kentucky public schools as a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent and served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee and Murray State University in Kentucky before joining the WCU faculty in 1950.
   
   He remained a WCU faculty member for 25 years, serving in the positions of professor, director of student teaching and teacher placement and head of the department of teaching before becoming dean. In 1986, he received the WCU Distinguished Service Award. In 1988, the university established the Taft B. Botner Conference Room in its education building in his honor.
   
   He organized and was the first president of the N.C. Association for Student Teaching and the Southeast Regional Association for Student Teaching and for a number of years was on the board of directors of the national association.
   
   A supporter of Catamount athletics, Botner also provided support for player-of-the-game awards at WCU football games. Botner, who played varsity baseball in college, was also a woodworker, cabinetmaker and U.S. Army veteran of World War II.
   
   Botner was the son of the late John E. and his stepmother, Della Lynch Botner.