Leland was a Valley Legend

Educator was a fixture on the fairways, lanes ||

YAKIMA, Wash. — By all accounts, Hazel Leland was an exemplary educator. She was thorough in her knowledge of whatever she taught, and effective in her ability to convey it to students.

Leland also was a keen competitor, winning the Women’s City golf championship no fewer than seven times and also claiming numerous bowling honors.

So perhaps it was this marvelous mix — educator, communicator and competitor — that made Leland an authentic Valley legend.

“I went to YVC (Yakima Valley College) to play baseball,” said one of her former students, Davis teacher and coach Pete Orgill. “But she inspired me and gave me a love for health education. And now I’ve been teaching it for 35 years.”

Leland, who passed away Feb. 19 at age 84, no doubt had similar impacts on countless students she encountered during her teaching and coaching career at Yakima High School and YVC — now Davis High and Yakima Valley Community College — respectively.

Born in Superior, Wis., Leland came to Yakima in 1948 to join the high school’s faculty. The following year she encountered a student teacher from Washington State named Bill Faller.

“She gave importance to what she was teaching,” said Faller, who himself became a teacher and coach of legend at YVCC. “I think she had the same approach to her activity classes. She was very serious about the modern dance classes she taught, and she taught bowling, golf and badminton, too. When she retired, I took over her badminton classes.”

A graduate of Bemidji State University (Minn.) in 1948, Leland was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 1980. She earned her master’s degree from Central Washington University and taught at Yakima High from 1948-57 and at YVC from 1957-87. Leland was YVC’s men’s golf coach from 1957-62.

She also had a contagious enthusiasm, one which transcended the classroom.

Jerry Ward, also a YVCC colleague, recalled in an e-mail that when his first daughter was born in 1971, he passed out cigars in the faculty lounge and that Leland was the only one to light up.

That story drew a hearty laugh from yet another of Leland’s contemporaries, Bobo Brayton.

“I never knew Hazel to smoke or drink,” he said in a telephone interview from his ranch outside Pullman, “but that sounds like her. What a wonderful woman to work with. I taught with Hazel for five years at the high school, then another five at the college. Great gal, great teacher.”

Brayton recalled that Leland and Mabel Sherar were faculty members at Yakima High. The college gymnasium now bears Glen Sherar’s name.

“She really loved what she was teaching,” Orgill said, “and I could tell I wasn’t the only person in the class who felt that way. I’d even call her at her house at night with questions, and she was glad to answer them.

“And I’m just one person. Imagine how she’s affected others, and how she’s affected the whole world. She’s changed it. She made it a better place.”

Ward mentioned in his e-mail that Leland’s concern for his family was not extinguished with her celebratory cigar.

“Hazel always asked me about Julie over the years,” he said.

It has become popular among educators to implore their students to “make a difference.”

Hazel Leland made a difference.

And she did so for many, many people over a very long time.