Miss Gertrude Hartung, Teacher and Principal

Gertrude Hartung was associated with the Sandusky City Schools for forty years. She began as a teacher in 1921, teaching at both Madison and Campbell Schools. When she was still in her 20s, Superintendent Frank J. Prout named her as principal of Madison School.

Later she served as principal of Barker School. In her final years of teaching, Miss Hartung taught Social Studies at the Sandusky High School. She retired from Sandusky City Schools in 1961. 

Sandusky native Glenn Everett, who worked as a news correspondent in Washington D.C., wrote a tribute to Miss Hartung in the June 25, 1989 issue of the Sandusky Register, not long after her death. He told about Miss Hartung taking a large group of elementary children on a flat-bed truck to the Hartung family farm on Campbell Street, so the students could see cows being milked, and corn being harvested.  On another field trip, the children watched milk being bottled at the old Esmond Dairy, and they all got an ice cream sandwich after the tour of the plant. A field trip that really made an impression on Glenn Everett was when all the members of the class were locked for a minute in a dark jail cell at the old Erie County Jail, as a deputy sheriff warned the students about the consequences of bad behavior.

Miss Hartung felt that by going on field trips, the children learned things in a practical way that could not be learned just from reading a book. Mr. Everett wrote, “She made education exciting so that her students wanted to come to school to learn as much as possible…She was the kind of teacher all teachers could wish to be.”  In 1974, Miss Hartung was honored by the Firelands Council of Camp Fire for her many years of service as a Camp Fire Girls leader. 

On June 9, 1989, Gertrude Hartung died at the age of 89. Funeral services were held at the Groff Funeral Home, and burial was at Oakland Cemetery. Miss Hartung touched many lives during her long career as an educator with the Sandusky City Schools