
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 10, 1995                   TAG: 9510100101
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LONGTIME NORTH CROSS TEACHER DIES

Margaret Northcross Ellis, for whom North Cross School was named, died Monday at age 85.

The teacher who ``could scare the wool out of you and let you know that she loved you at the same time,'' a former student wrote at Ellis' retirement, used sleigh bells to warn students of her wrath.

``One year during a North Cross football game, I rang the bells to cheer our boys, and the whole team stopped,'' she said in the interview. ``They all obeyed the bells.''

Ellis was the private school's only teacher in its beginning. She taught a kindergarten class in 1944 organized by Mary Rogers Butts.

``It was me and 18 children,'' Ellis said about her first year with the school.

Butts was the one who decided to split the Northcross name to make it North Cross.

Ellis served as the school's headmistress for 16 years before the school merged with Eaton School in Roanoke County to form the present North Cross. She spent about 38 years teaching at the school.

Years after Ellis retired at age 70 to study tap and ballet at Roanoke College, she remained in touch with the school that bore her name. She told stories to students at the school library, designed the school's Christmas card yearly and made decorations for the senior dinner.

Students perhaps remember her first for her leadership in school plays and elaborate costumes she made for holidays and the annual Field Day. For Field Day, she dressed as a Japanese geisha girl, a Spanish woman, Pocahontas and Miss Kitty from "Gunsmoke."

Ellis got her first taste for teaching in 1927 when she taught first-graders for three months to earn $100 - money for college.

With her mind set on a teaching career, Ellis enrolled at what is now Longwood College. She earned a certificate to teach primary school in 1929 and worked as a first-grade teacher for the next 15 years at public schools in Salem, Roanoke County and Roanoke.

By attending summer school between teaching stints, Ellis earned her bachelor of science degree in education in 1940.

Butts called Ellis ``one of the best teachers I know'' in the 1990 interview and said she was pleased with what Ellis had done for North Cross.

by CNB