Lydia Engle Welsh
Born Lydia Maude Engle on February 16, 1949 of George and Margaret Engle in Wango, Maryland. Maudie, as she is known to the family, went to school in Snow Hill, Maryland and graduated from Snow Hill High School. She did her undergraduate work at East Carolina University and then took a job in Jacksonville, Florida. She worked as a science teacher in 1971-1973 at Highlands Junior High School. As part of a workshop team in January 1972, she met Tom, a member of the workshop staff. Lydia returned to graduate school at Towson State College in 1973-1974, earning a masters degree in reading. She and Tom were married in August 1974. Lydia took a job teaching reading at Ribault Junior High School, in Jacksonville, from the fall of 1974 to 1976. Still at Ribault, she switched back to science, until 1978 when Kate was born. From 1978 through the summer of 1981, Lyd was a stay-at-home mom. In the fall of 1981, following the PATCO strike, Lyd returned to teaching at Stilwell Junior High School in Compensatory English.

The last day before the Christmas break of 1981, Lyd received her formal observation from the administration of Stilwell JHS and was convinced that they were trying to eliminate her. Quite the contrary, she learned in the spring that the Stilwell principal wanted to add a Gifted program and that she had been chosen, unanimously, from the faculty to start this program.

From August of 1982 to the summer of 1985, Lydia was the teacher of the Gifted at Stilwell Junior High School in grades 8 and 9. She had no home classroom, but loaded all of her educational belongings on a three-deck library cart which she wheeled from room to room. She even had a homeroom of emotionally disturbed children.

In the summer of 1985 Lydia was offered a position teaching science to gifted seventh graders at Stanton College Prep Junior/Senior High School. She accepted the offer and taught there until the summer of 1991 when the junior high program left Stanton and went to James Weldon Johnson, a former seventh grade center and now a middle school for the academically talented. Daughter, Kate, was a member of her 1st seventh grade class at JWJ.

For 2007-2008, Lydia was a senior member of the JWJ faculty in her 29th year in science, her 25th year in teaching the Gifted, her 16thyear at JWJ and her 32nd year in education.

On June 10, 2008, she retired. On July 16th, we moved to Maryland. Following the death of her mother, Margaret, in May of 2018, she and Tom moved to Wyomissing, Pennsylvania in May of 2019.
In the summer of 2018, we both submitted DNA samples to "23 and Me."
Lew's lineage is:
United Kingdom48.8%
German29.7%
Iberian2.8%
Italian1.1%
Scandanavian0.1%
NW Europe14.8%
Southern Europe1.6%
Europe1.0%
Japanese0.1%

01/24/2023