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Today's Featured Biography

Connie Cowan Downen

I graduated from Kent State University in 1966 with a degree in Physical Education, Health, and Recreation. My first job was teaching grades K-6 in Leadville, CO. I wanted to live in the mountains, and boy, did I ever. The elevation at Leadville is 10, 252 ft. It is the historical home of the"Unsinkable Molly Brown."

I married Hunter Horvath, whom I met at Kent State, in June of 1967. He was attending forestry school at Utah State University, and we visited a couple of times in 1966-67. We lived In Logan for the next year, while I was teaching junior high girls P.E., grades 7-9, in Preston, ID, just over the border.

We spent the summers of 1967 and 1968 living in a lookout tower on Black Butte outside of Eureka, Montana, overlooking the Canadian border. While there, in '68, we decided to go to Petersburg, Alaska.

I got a job as an elementary Librarian, cataloging many book in the new school library. Halfway through the school year, the high school girls P.E. teacher quit, and I got her job teaching 10-12.

One of the jobs my husband did that year was raising mink at a remote site, at the far end of Mitkof Island, where Petersburg is located. The purpose of the mink experiment was to test the effects of sonic booms on gestating mink. The Utah farmers were suing the U.S. Air Force claiming that the mink were eating their babies after hearing a sonic boom.

The experimenters who were doing the testing at the time of the test sonic boom, were Doctors of Veterinary Medicine from Washington State University, in Pullman, WA. In the process of talking and working with them, Hunter decided he wanted to go to Vet school at WSU. So that spring we moved to Pullman, WA.

I had decided by then that we would probably be spending our lives in remote parts of Alaska, or some place like that, and that I had better get a certificate to teach elementary school classroom, so that I would have a better chance of finding a job. I attended WSU for one year, got my certificate for classroom teaching, and taught some P.E. classes at the college level while working as a graduate intern.

That next fall, I got a job teaching fifth grade in Pullman Public Schools. Part of their curriculum was outdoor education. They all went to camp for one week in the spring. This is what I really wanted to major in when I went to college, but couldn't find a school close to Barberton with that curriculum. So I was thrilled to be involved in the fifth grade outdoor education program.

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