Longtime teacher Burkholder dies

Wednesday, March 20, 2002 | 9:41 a.m.

As a music teacher, Miriam Burkholder could be demanding -- expecting the best from each student.

For some, that meant stage performance quality singing, but for many others it meant accepting a student's limitations and leaving them with a pleasant memory of what otherwise would have been a dreadful experience.

"Lord knows she had patience with me because I was the worst singer in the whole school," said Don Bittle, one of Burkholder's first students in 1948 at the old Basic Elementary School. "She took me out of many potentially embarrassing situations."

Bittle, now a retired Basic High School teacher, said Burkholder came up with various errands for him to run during the really difficult numbers.

Burkholder, widow of former schools superintendant Lyal W. Burkholder, died Sunday in Henderson after a brief illness. She was 94.

Services for the Henderson resident of 59 years will be 11 a.m. Saturday at Palm Mortuary-Henderson.

Patty Regan, who in the 1968-69 school year performed in Burkholder's Special Chorus, composed of hand-picked Basic Elementary fifth and sixth graders, said she both feared and loved her mentor.

"She was very stern -- she could just squint at you and keep in you in line -- yet she produced some of the best music to come out of elementary school students," Regan said. "She was a fantastic teacher."

Bittle, Regan and others recalled that Burkholder was a stickler for insisting her students knew by heart the state song, "Home Means Nevada."

"She knew her business, she knew her music and she knew how to deal with kids," said longtime friend and retired teacher Margaret Moss. "Former students would stop her on the street and ask her if she remembered them and, right up to the end, she did."

Ilene Bittle, Don's wife, said she last saw Burkholder at a Feb. 21 Delta Kappa Gamma meeting. "She had a marvelous sense of humor," Ilene said. "She was dedicated to everything she did."

Burkholder was a teacher in the old Henderson School District from 1948 until the merger of independent districts in 1954. She then taught in the Clark County School District from 1954 until her retirement from Gordon McCaw Elementary -- originally Basic Elementary -- in 1973.

Miriam's husband, for whom Burkholder Middle School is named, was Henderson School District superintendent from 1949 until the 1954 merger.

Known affectionately as "Mr. Education," Lyal Burkholder died in 1983.

The Burkholders came to Henderson in 1943, where he served as Basic High School principal 1943-49, and she worked for the Henderson Housing Authority during the mid-1940s.

Miriam Burkholder was born Oct. 24, 1907, in Frankfort, Ky.

She was former director of the Alpha Beta Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi and a member of the Southern Nevada Retired Teachers Association, the Henderson Community Church and Sunrise Chapter No. 28 of the Order of Eastern Star.

Burkholder is survived by a daughter, Connie Burkholder Lindesmith of Arcadia, Calif.; three grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

The family said donations can be made in Burkholder's memory to the McCaw Elementary School Music Department.