FILMS
MARY LYON: PRECIOUS TIME
Julie Harris restores Mary Lyon to her historic fame as one of America’s
leading educational pioneers. From rural Buckland, Massachusetts, Lyon, a gifted
student, vowed first to educate herself and then help all able women be educated.
She would focus on their “precious time” between girlhood and a teaching
career or marriage. Inspired by the model of Amherst College, she took her
hopes first to Ipswich Academy near Boston, all the while planning for her
dream — the first institution of higher learning for women. Mount Holyoke
Seminary opened its doors in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1837. As missionary
wives or single women, Lyon’s graduates immediately went to China, Japan, the
Middle East and Africa as well as to Native Americans and blacks in America’s
West and South. Her influence touched, and still touches, the globe (30 min.).
