Adelaide Laetitia Miethke OBE (1881 - 1962)

Born 8 Jun 1881 in Manoora, South Australia

Died 4 Feb 1962 at age 80 in Woodville, South Australia, Australia

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Biography

Adelaide Laetitia Miethke (1881-1962), ^[1] educationist, was born on 8 June 1881 at Manoora, South Australia, sixth daughter among the ten children of Carl Rudolph Alexander Miethke, Prussian schoolmaster, and his South Australian wife, Emma Caroline (Louisa), née Schultze. Addie suffered from asthma. She was educated at country schools and Woodville Public School before becoming a pupil-teacher in 1899 and in 1903-04 attending the University Training College. Her first appointment was to Lefevre Peninsula School. In 1916 she became first female vice-president of the South Australian Public School Teachers' Union, and was a forceful advocate of salary rises. From 1915 she had taught at the Woodville High School, from 1920 being senior mistress of the girls' section. She studied part time to complete her degree (B.A., 1924).

In 1915 Adelaide Miethke had addressed the Women's Non Party Political Association, supporting the widely held view that technically gifted girls should have a chance of developing their bent. That year she was founding president of the Women Teachers' League, which impressed W. T. McCoy, director of education, with the need to recognize women teachers' contributions. He began to place women as headmistresses and appointed Miethke as an inspector of schools on 30 November 1924, at £525. Next year he established metropolitan central schools with a vocational bias. . . . . .

. . . . . . In 1936 Miethke had been president of the Women's Centenary Council of South Australia which, as a memorial to pioneer women, raised £5000 to establish the Alice Springs base of the Australian Aerial Medical Service (later Royal Flying Doctor Service), and built the Pioneer Women's Memorial garden in Adelaide. The council produced A Book of South Australia: Women in the First Hundred Years.
She also designed and organized a grand Empire pageant, ^[2] her stentorian voice being ideal for rallying the 14,000 schoolchildren involved. The pageant symbolized 'in rhythmic movement, colour and music the major expansions of our great Empire'. Next year she was appointed OBE.

. . . . . . She spent the little free time she allowed herself in motoring interstate with lifelong friend Phebe Watson, reading, gardening and organizing charitable, professional and patriotic causes. . . .

. . . . . In 1915-17 Miethke organized the South Australian Children's Patriotic Fund. In 1940-46 she directed the Schools Patriotic Fund of South Australia; £402,133 was raised and she wrote pamphlets about both campaigns. From 1941 she served on the Women's War Service Council.

S.P.F. money remaining after World War II went to buy a hostel, Adelaide Miethke House (opened 1951), for country girls studying in Adelaide: it bore a plaque inscribed 'Children loved her'. The hostel was administered by the Young Women's Christian Association, to which Miethke belonged.

Further S.P.F. money went to the (Royal) Flying Doctor Service; Miethke, a friend of John Flynn, was the State branch's first woman president in 1941 and edited Air Doctor. In 1946 while travelling to Alice Springs, she noticed the shyness of outback children. The idea of '“bridging the lonely distance” seized her mind' and suggested her 'most constructive work'. She devised, and single-mindedly set up as a branch of the F.D.S., the world's first School of the Air. It began operating from Alice Springs Higher Primary School on 20 September 1950, using individual, pedal-wireless sets on remote homesteads to link the children.

In 1941-46 Miethke had edited the monthly schoolchildren's magazine, Children's Hour. In 1942 she was founding president of the Woodville District Child Welfare Association which established four pre-schools; the Adelaide Miethke Kindergarten (opened 1953) still flourishes. 1949 saw her last organizing feat—the United Nations Appeal for Children. She once admitted, 'I fear work has become almost a disease with me!', and she was unwell at this time. But she maintained unabated her appetite for clubs and committee work: the Girl Guides' Association (commissioner and State council-member); the Royal Commonwealth Society; the National Council of Women, of which she was State and national president; the Adelaide Women's Club and the Catherine Helen Spence Scholarship Committee.

People – LifeTree

John Flynn OBE DD (1880-1951)

Alfred Hermann Traeger OBE (1895-1980)

Magnificent Display by Children on Adelaide Oval: (1936, December 3). Chronicle
(Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 33. Retrieved June 26, 2021 - photos - and continued on p.34, thenfacing page 35. ^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ Suzanne Edgar and Helen Jones, Miethke, Adelaide Laetitia (1881–1962), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 25 June 2021.
2. ↑ CREATING A PAGEANT OF THE EMPIRE (1936, June 9). The Advertiser
   (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954), p. 9. Retrieved June 26, 2021
3. ↑ Memorable Centenary Display on Adelaide Oval by 13,000 Children from Public Schools: (1936, December 3). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 35. Retrieved June 26, 2021