She was both creative and industrious. She and her hat-making work were even featured in the local paper in 1964.
Hatmaking Led Her to Teaching
by Beverly Wolter, Staff Arts Reporter for the Twin City Sentinel, the evening newspaper in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Saturday, January 4, 1964, page 5
Some women make their own hats as a matter of economy in accumulating a large supply.
Some make them because they want a certain style, because they want to match hat and other attire, or because they want a hat that’s individual and different.
It was for none of these reasons that Mrs. Beverly N. Sullivan Jr. started a hat-making project that has led her into teaching the craft for the Arts and Crafts Association.
“It was a matter of hats not fitting,” she said.
Mrs. Sullivan’s head size is 24.
Most hats — “all the pretty ones,” she said are 22.
When Home Demonstration Agent Mrs. Carolyn Russell offered a workshop in straw hatmaking several years ago, Mrs. Sullivan signed up.
“I thoroughly enjoyed it, and made a hat,” she said.
Attended Workshops
She followed the straw-hat workshop with attendance at workshops held at First Baptist Church as part of a morning recreation program.
An ardent worker at the church, Mrs. Sullivan “wrote up the instructions for the workshops before moving on to two other hat-making courses taught at the YWCA by Mrs. Gary Smith.
Mrs. Sullivan still hadn’t had enough. When the YMCA offered hat-making by Mrs. Vallie Woordward, Mrs. Sullivan was in the class.
Why the YMCA was offering hat-making was not clear, but apparently the class was a great success from Mrs. Sullivan’s viewpoint.
She often drops in on Miss Woodward for pointers, she said, describing the long-time milliner as “the most helpful somebody.”
To help her in her hat-making, Mrs. Sullivan went to the Arts And Crafts Association at the Community Center to sign up for a course in designing.
The next thing she knew she was being asked by association workshop manager Bess Burke to teach hat-making.
“You don’t know a thing about me,” Mrs. Sullivan protested, at which Mrs. Burke laughed, muttered something about feminine intuition,” and urged Mrs. Sullivan to consider the idea. She taught her first hat-making course last fall.
“I’ve done a lot of teaching, Mrs. Sullivan said. “I taught English in high school and I’ve taught for the Pilot Mountain Baptist Association.”
“I enjoy being with people… I like to see what the instruction I give can produce and what they can do.…”
Where hats are concerned, she doesn’t feel that any special talent is required, although it helps if one has a knack for hats.
“I think you can learn and grow in making them,” she said.
Though some persons in Mrs. Sullivan’s hat-making class, which will start Wednesday, Jan. 15, will have had some experience, she doesn’t feel that beginners will be at any disadvantage.
One caution she had for beginners and for more experienced persons — “have something in mind for the hat to go with. Don’t make one at random.”