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Betty Merrill has retired, leaving a legacy of Latin students.

Betty Merrill has retired, leaving a legacy of Latin students. By SUSAN SCOTT NEAL

By SUSAN SCOTT NEAL

Date published: 6/14/2004

She's the queen of conjugation, the doyenne of declension, the goddess of grammar.

She's the lady of Latin.

She's Betty Merrill.

With her yardstick scepter and assistance from The Fates, she has been ruling the roost in Latin classes for 35 years now, bestowing gifts from the ancient world on hundreds of adoring high school students.

Some say she's the reason the Roman poet Horace coined the phrase "carpe diem."

Seize the day she does, every single day, for she believes every minute, every second, every verb, every noun, every lanky boy and every giggly girl count in the magnum opus of her life--drilling Latin into the brains of teenagers.

"They don't know it, but Latin's gonna save the world," she declares.

Alas, even queens must retire, and so it is with Betty Merrill. Last week at the city's James Monroe High School, she gave her last exam to weary fifth-years reading Catullus, to bleary-eyed translators of Cicero, and to shell-shocked grammarians of Latin II.

She transformed her final class of fresh-faced first-years into budding scholars with a new appreciation for a foreign language and a better understanding of the language they speak every day.

It's been a bittersweet year in Room 111 at James Monroe High School, where Merrill has reigned supreme for the past 17 years. Come September, one of her former students at JM will take up Merrill's yardstick scepter to become the new Latin teacher.

David Blosser says he's honored--but awed--to be following in her path.

"She inspired me with her enthusiasm, and I majored in classics and became a Latin teacher because of her. Those are pretty big shoes to fill."

Indeed they are. Merrill's students consistently rank at or near the top on state and national Latin exams, and this year marked the 11th out of the past 13 years that the program was awarded the plaque for being first place in the state by the Classical Association of Virginia.

On the National Latin Exam this year, 77 of her 85 students received scores placing them in the top two categories: summa cum laude and maxima cum laude. On the state exam, 10 students won first-, second-, or third-place awards.

Students, colleagues, and parents say the success stems from Merrill's high expectations and rigorous--even relentless--approach.

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Date published: 6/14/2004