In June 1997, longtime educator Beverly Benner Cassara shared her vision of hope with her 50th reunion class at Colby College.
“I think we should be optimistic about much of American life. Sure, we need to be skeptical and questioning, but that is different from cynicism which lets the bad block out the good,’’ Dr. Cassara, a former dean of graduate studies at the University of the District of Columbia, said in a talk titled “Celebrating Life.’’
“We do not have to wallow in cynicism,’’ she told her former classmates. “People can change things, and we are the people – you and I.’’
A professor of adult education from 1970 to 1990 at the University of the District of Columbia and cofounder of the Cambridge Senior Volunteer Clearinghouse in 1994,Dr. Cassara died from complications of lung disease Sept. 20 in her Cambridge home. She was 94.
Dr. Cassara was “a champion for the undereducated and a woman with unlimited energy,’’ said Faustine Jones-Wilson, her close friend and former colleague. “I used to say, ‘Beverly, that’s a marvelous idea, but how are you going to find time to do it?’ And she’d respond, ‘I’ll find a way,’ and she always did.’’
Renowned for her leading role in multicultural and women’s education, Dr. Cassara was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Famein 2003.
“It was hard to keep up with her at times,’’ recalled Clearinghouse director and cofounder Bob Hurlbut. “When we first started out, and not yet on the Internet, we would post fliers on telephone poles and grocery store windows, and Beverly would put up as many as 50 in a single day.’’
Dr. Cassara “welcomed you like a loving grandmother and impressed you with her wisdom,’’ Hurlbut said.
Located in Central Square, the Clearinghouse facilitates matches between organizations in Cambridge and senior volunteers and sponsors workshops and networking events.
When the Clearinghouse established its annual Beverly Benner Cassara Award in 2008 to honor senior volunteers, Dr. Cassara was its first recipient for her “commitment to the ideals of productive aging, lifelong learning, and the understanding that volunteering is an enduring resource for the entire community.’’
One of seven siblings, Dr. Cassara was born in Hanover, a daughter of the Rev. Guy Percy Benner and the former Julia Caroline Whitney.
Dr. Cassara received a bachelor’s degree in English from Colby in 1947, a master’s in education from Bridgewater State College in 1954, and a doctorate in adult education from Boston University in 1970.
While attending Colby, Dr. Cassara worked in the summertime at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, waitressing and baking. She sometimes took months off to earn tuition money, including the 1943-44 academic year in Washington, D.C., when she was secretary to Captain Edward Steichen, head of the Naval photographic institute.
After she returned to college, Steichen arranged to have his photo exhibit “Power in the Pacific’’ displayed at Colby. That prompted Dr. Cassara, a member of Colby’s camera club, to write in a memoir that her “heart rejoiced again for having the privilege of knowing such a man.’’
While working as a news editor and broadcaster at WBET-AM in Brockton after graduating Colby, she met classical music disc jockey Ernest Cassara. They married in 1949.
Mr. Cassara, who died in 2015, was a Unitarian Universalist minister, and a college professor and author. The couple’s interests and academic pursuits led to many trips abroad.
Dr. Cassara, who had been a schoolteacher in Hanson, Abington, and Arlington, was director of personnel and counselor to students at Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and director of adult education at Goddard College in Vermont before moving to Federal City College, which became part of the University of the District of Columbia.
There, she initiated a faculty exchange collaboration with the adult education college in Nairobi, Kenya, and founded a program to educate low-income African-American women from a housing project in Washington.
Student volunteers from her graduate course in adult education helped 14 women earn general educational development diplomas. In a letter to a friend, Dr. Cassara related how one night a week she visited the woman in charge of the housing project. The woman could not read and Dr. Cassara taught her every word and phrase of the Declaration of Independence.
“My mother believed in opportunity because she had to work hard to create her own opportunities,’’ said Dr. Cassara’s daughter, Catherine, an associate professor of journalism and international studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “She was a humanist, always reaching out to put the pieces together for others and not making a big deal about it. She was my best friend and my confidante.’’
Dr. Cassara, a former Fulbright-Hays senior research fellow, published the books “Adult Education in a Multicultural Society,’’ “Adult Education Through World Collaboration,’’ and “American Women: The Changing Image.’’
She also was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, a visiting research professor at the University of Siegen in Germany, a visiting scholar at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, and an executive committee member of the International Council for Adult Education.
Her daughter Shirley of Melrose, a psychology professor emerita at Bunker Hill Community College, said that “as Beverly’s child, I always had the implicit understanding that I had an obligation to use whatever skills or talents I possessed to effect change, no matter how small or large, in making life better for people.
“I had a great role model because my mother never waited for things to happen,’’ Shirley added. “She made them happen.’’
In addition to her two daughters, Dr. Cassara leaves her son, Nicholas of Palmer, Alaska, and two grand-children.
A celebration of her life will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 29 in Cadbury Commons at Cambridge.
“My mother understood that to help people learn, you have to move barriers that are in their way,’’ said Nicholas, who formerly worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and is dyslexic.
“She made sure that I did not define myself by this challenge and I had a world view even as a first-grader,’’ he said in an e-mail. “Mother’s belief in me allowed me to believe in myself and whether it was me, or a poor inner-city woman with the cards stacked against her, Beverly believed in us.’’
Marvin Pave can be reached at marvin.pave@rcn.com.
