A Legacy of Teaching

Dine Dellenback honors her husband with the gift of education.

Dine Dellenback believes in the power of teaching. She saw firsthand the impact made by her late husband, a lifelong educator. After posts in academia, including teaching physiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, Bob Dellenback went on to have successful careers in farming and fundraising. But he never stopped being a teacher. “He was always mentoring other people and imparting knowledge,” Dellenback says. “He was able to explain things in words everyone could understand. It was an extraordinary gift.”

So, when it came to honoring Bob, who died in 2016, Dine naturally gravitated toward education. Her contribution to an endowment for the George Washington Teacher Institute through the Geraldine W. and Robert J. Dellenback Foundation supports professional development, such as digital resources, residential programs, and fellowships, for elementary and secondary school teachers. “I couldn’t think of anything more worthwhile than supporting the Teacher Institute,” she says. “Learning about George Washington is absolutely vital for Americans.”

The gift is the latest in a series from the couple, who developed a keen interest in history 20 years ago on a trip to Greece led by renowned classicist Donald Kagan. The scholar’s enthusiasm was infectious. “All my history teachers did was make us learn names and dates. I’m now old enough to understand history a bit more and appreciate it a whole lot,” says Dine. “[Kagan’s] lessons were so powerful. This passion absolutely exploded in my head.”

Once she caught the bug, she delved into the Revolutionary War and became active in the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a state Regent in Wyoming, where the couple had moved from Connecticut in 1990. In Jackson, Wyoming, the pair’s next-door neighbors and good friends—John and Adrienne Mars (a Vice Regent with the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association)—got them involved in funding the restoration of George Washington’s study.

Dine remembers the experience fondly, recalling that Bob felt honored to have placed a book Washington had prized (about flour milling, by Oliver Evans) on Washington’s desk in the study. “We were enthralled with the opportunity to fund the restoration of the private space that George Washington cherished so much,” she says. “It made us realize what an extraordinary man he was.”

Later, when the original books were moved to a climate-controlled vault for safekeeping, the Dellenbacks funded a library of 18th-century books to replace them. They also supported the restoration of Washington’s beloved barrel-backed swivel armchair made by New York cabinetmaker Thomas Burling, now known as the Uncommon Chair [see story on page 4]. And in keeping with the library theme, Dine supported the transcription and publication of the diary young Washington kept on his fateful trip to Barbados, during which he contracted smallpox, and consequently, immunity to the life-threatening disease that would later ravage his army in the Revolutionary War.

Dellenback hopes her latest gift is one that will keep on giving, ensuring that legions of schoolchildren learn the extraordinary story surrounding the country’s first president. “If you have 20 children in a class, and you teach for 30 years, that’s a lot of kids you’ve taught and influenced,” she says. “It’s like dropping a pebble into a pond and watching the ripples.”