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Anna Petteys
Born August 21, 1892
Died August 27, 1970
Inducted 2008
Anna Columbia Petteys came to Colorado in 1914, a graduate Phi
Beta Kappa of Grinnell College and the proud wife of Alonzo Petteys.
Alonzo purchased a bank in Brush, Colorado; Anna ran the home and
took care of their four children. Her public interests were church,
the Red Cross, and War Bond drives.
When the youngest child started college in 1943, Anna went back
to school herself, driving 126 miles a day to Greeley. She earned
a Master’s degree at Colorado State College of Education
(now the University of Northern Colorado).
The Petteyses established a scholarship fund in the name of their
older son who died during World War II, giving one boy each year
a two-year scholarship to Northeastern Junior College in Sterling.
That has expanded to eleven young men currently. In northeastern
Colorado, the Petteyses practiced a quiet philanthropy, funding
community needs like the Northeast Colorado Rehabilitation Center,
hospital and library additions, a safehouse for women in Morgan
County, the Washington County Events Center, the Wray Rehabilitation
and Activity Center, volunteer fire departments, and projects from
Julesburg to Holyoke to Haxtun. Anna and her son bought a radio
station and two newspapers that served the people of northeastern
Colorado.
In 1945, Petteys was appointed to the boards of several Colorado
colleges, including Adams State University and Colorado State
College of Education. Petteys was the first woman to be elected
to the Colorado Board of Education. She chaired the board three
times, advocating schools for migrant children and those needing
special education, improvement of small high schools, and a Commissioner
of Education to carry out these programs. This caught the attention
of the White House, and in 1950 she was appointed to the Committee
on Education for Migrant Children and later to the Committee
for Special Education. She was selected to attend the United
Nations Charter Convention in San Francisco, and was then appointed
to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and the
UN Speakers’ Bureau. In these capacities she visited and
spoke to women’s groups on six continents, urging women
everywhere to assume leadership and to promote education in their
countries. Her message across the world was that education and
freedom are intertwined. |
