Beulah Lafferty Brinker ’49
A love for teaching and traveling led Beulah Lafferty Brinker ’49 on a33-year voyage around the globe. Though bit by the traveling bug on a teaching stint in Germany, Brinker began her career locally and did not pursue traveling until her retirement. “After retiring, I made traveling my new full-time job,” said Brinker.

After graduating from Glassboro State Teachers College, Brinker, a specialist in language arts, social studies, curriculum development and student advisement, landed a job teaching fourth grade at Woodbury Public School. “My starting salary was $1,800,” she recalls. Over the course of her career she went on to teach at six other schools, including North Plainfield Public School, the Elementary Education Departments at The State University of New York at Geneseo, and the U.S. Army Dependents School in Boeblingen, Germany. She spent the last 25 years of her career teaching at her alma mater, Glassboro State College.

While teaching full-time, Brinker continued her own education, earning her M.A. in Higher Education and the coursework for an Ed. D. from New York University. Co-author of the book, The Irregular Verb—To Teach, and a nominee for Who’s Who of American Women (1970), as well as many other awards, Brinker was also honored as the 1971 Distinguished Alumnus at Glassboro State College and named professor emerita upon her retirement in 1985.

Since then, Brinker has spent much of her time abroad, visiting all seven continents and more than 100 countries. “Every country is interesting because of its people, geography and animal life,” she said. “My favorite experiences have been on safaris in Africa where there were no hotels and our safari jeep was momentarily charged by a rhino.” She also enjoyed her time spent in Antarctica. “The weather wasn’t as bitter cold as I expected it would be,” she said. “But I still piled on 21 layers of clothing.”

Though not traveling as often as she used to, Brinker hopes to one day get to Aruba and would like to see the mountain gorillas in Burundi, Africa. For the past 14 years she has spent her summers in New Jersey and winters in Florida, where she plays the accordion in a string band that tours three counties of the Gulf Coast and performs at the Florida State Fair. When not traveling overseas or making music, she enjoys having lunch with former Glassboro students and her Woodbury “fourth-graders”—who now, she jokes, “are starting to talk about social security.”

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Alumni can honor retired faculty by donating to a scholarship fund and other investment. Call Anne Hagan at 856-256-5402 or visit the Rowan University Foundation.