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1999 Homecoming

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	Wildcat Highlight: John Lane Wildcat Highlight: Karen Seccombe In Memoriam Ella C. Sapp 1898 - 1999

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Ella C.Sapp 1898-1999

Ella Sapp's first educational experience was home schooling in the gold mining community of Howland Flat in Plumas County. The small town was a thriving community of 2,000 people when Sapp was born in 1898. Today it exists only in memory. When Sapp died in February 1999, she left a $1.5 million endowment for CSU, Chico whose earnings create the Ella C. Sapp Hall Fund and the Ella C. Sapp Scholarship Fund. Because of her generosity, the alumni office building, renamed Ella Caroline Sapp Hall, will be preserved and maintained in perpetuity.

Sapp's family emigrated from the British Isles to Nova Scotia when it was still known as Acadia. As an adult, she visited the old family sites, where distant relatives pointed out the one-room school to her. In an oral history memoir, Sapp noted, "Education seemed to have been important throughout our history." After her initial foray into schooling, Sapp attended Table Rock School in California, a one-room schoolhouse run by Annie E. Sinnott, who successfully encouraged students to become teachers. Because there were no high schools nearby, Sinnott tutored promising young people to complete their high school education and to prepare for the college entry examination.

Sapp received private lessons from Sinnott and from her older sister, Mildred. "My sister took a great interest in my education, and she was an excellent role model for me," said Sapp. After much study and moderate trepidation, Sapp traveled to Marysville to take the week-long teacher examination. Of the seven students taking the test, Sapp was the only one to pass.

After her graduation from the Chico Normal School in 1916, she began her teaching career in Berry Creek.

She then returned home to teach at Table Rock School. When her parents moved from Howland Flat to Stirling City, Sapp followed. She taught fifteen children in Bald Mt. School in Yuba County, happy to be out of the snow and working with a smaller group of children. In Stirling City, she met her husband, Louis Sapp, a bookkeeper and cashier for Diamond Match Company.

When they had been married for several years, Louis Sapp was transferred to Chico. Ella Sapp wondered if she could find a teaching job. Because of the Depression and fears of job scarcity, there was talk about "too many married teachers taking jobs away for the young graduates and men," said Sapp. She worked as a substitute teacher, and then as a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher at Shasta Union School. She remained at Shasta Union School for the rest of her career, first as a teacher, then as the principal.

"She was a great person to work for. Very fair, and listened to all sides, and when she made her decision, that was it, it stopped there," recalled Frieda DeBernardi, a friend and colleague. Sapp's dedication to education was obvious in her activities with Delta Kappa Gamma, her insistence and support of ongoing teacher educational institutes, and her reputation as a fair and excellent teacher and administrator. Sapp said, "Being a teacher has been such a rewarding, joyous life that I would always want to follow that career if I had a chance to do it over again."

-- Barbara Alderson, University Publications