Success Stories
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Success in Incorporating Activities for Kids:
The Mary Breckinridge Festival in Hyden
This success story is the result of one woman pursuing her passion
to educate children about the wealth of history and contributions that
have come out of their community. Mary Ethel Wooton grew up in Hyden,
Kentucky and moved away to get her education in History and English,
later becoming a teacher. She returned home to Hyden and attended her
first Mary Breckinridge Festival in many years. She was disappointed
in the lack of actual information about Mary Breckinridge, the founder
of The Frontier Nursing Service. By asking a couple of children in her
family, she confirmed that the Mary Breckinridge story was not getting
through to children. She visited local schools and discovered that
many children only knew Mary Breckinridge as the name of the local
hospital and the schools weren’t teaching about her in the curriculum.
Mary Ethel initiated a project to educate local children about the
amazing history of Mary Breckinridge in Hyden, thereby instilling in
them a sense of pride in their community.
Through her teaching experience, Mary Ethel knew that educating
children involves many factors — learning must be both interesting and
fun and education must be built upon with different learning
experiences year after year. She took off with her ideas for reaching
children, first working with an artist to create a 4-page coloring
book depicting Mary Breckinridge in scenes that educate about what she
did in the community. She distributed this to the five local
elementary schools and introduced it to first grade classes. The next
year, Mary Ethel developed a very simple picture for Kindergarten
students to color as they begin their education about Mary
Breckinridge. Each year she has added an activity for another grade of
school, which is intended to build on the lessons from previous years.
Third grade students color posters that depict activities at the
annual festival. The lesson for sixth grade focuses on the book “Mary
on Horseback,” by Rosemary Wells, and utilizes people from the
community to read chapters aloud to the classes. Students from the
midwifery school read the first chapter, local nurses read chapter
two, Mary Ethel reads chapter three, and the students are asked to
continue the story by writing an additional chapter. All of these
activities are encouraged by displaying the colored pictures around
town, judging and awards for the written assignments, and presenting
the written assignments at the festival. A local 4-H agent also became
involved as a presenter of the awards.
Mary Ethel’s most recent contribution to educating the children is
“learning units” that help teachers of any grade present a cohesive
lesson about Mary Breckinridge. She bought a rolling suitcase for each
elementary school and had the Frontier Nursing Service logo
embroidered on each. Then she filled the suitcases with a variety of
educational materials and instructions for teachers to build a lesson
appropriate for each grade level. A local crafter made dolls for the
kits, some representing Mary Breckinridge in her nurse uniform and
others that depict patients. The kits include toy horses for lessons
about how the nurses traveled on horseback, and toy jeeps to instruct
about how the transportation modernized.
Mary Ethel Wooton says that the most rewarding part of all this
work is her follow-up with the students. She returns their artwork and
writing assignments to the schools a couple of weeks after the
festival and has a chance to see what the children took away from the
event. She is very happy with the impact of the educational tools on
how kids experience the festival. Some teachers have supported the
effort of continued learning by taking their students on follow-up
fieldtrips to Mary Breckinridge historical sites. Mary Ethel has seen
the realization of her ultimate goal of instilling in the children a
sense of pride in their community and self-esteem for having an
investment in the local culture and the festival.
