When she gave the valedictorian address at Sharpsburg High School in 1923, Margaret Hutchinson Foster thanked the teachers, on behalf of her fellow graduates.

She held onto the text of that speech for 88 years. In it, she prophetically noted the value teachers had to students: "We are aware of their very great personal interest in the success of each of us. We realize further that they will be responsible in a large measure for whatever attainments any of us may reach."

As valedictorian, she earned a full scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where she got a degree in English. She went on to become a celebrated high school English teacher in Mifflin County, Derry Township and the Oakmont School District from 1931 to 1944.

Among the throngs of former students who kept in touch with her when she left teaching to raise her daughter in 1944 were doctors, lawyers, many teachers and George M. Elsey, a speech writer and aide to President Harry S. Truman who helped write the 1947 State of the Union address, the Truman Doctrine speech of March 12, 1947, and speeches for his 1948 whistle-stop campaign.

Mrs. Foster, a longtime resident of Oakmont, died Sunday. She was 102.

At the end of her life, she lived at The Willows nursing home, where she encountered and visited several former students who were fellow residents.

Students remembered her as a disciplinarian and a stickler on grammar who was particularly irked by dangling participles and subject-verb disagreement.

"She thought you had to know how to spell and punctuate to express yourself," said her daughter, Jane Wallis Foster of Oakmont. She was known for requiring students to give book reports as a character from the assigned novel.

Her daughter, who followed her lead and taught 36 years in the Shaler Area School District, said the Oakmont alumni who came by their home over the years recalled, "She was extremely strict almost to the point of intimidation. She would stand behind them and they would almost shake. But when they got her to laugh with their book reports and projects, they said, tears rolled down her face."

She loved to quote the poetry of Robert Burns and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and loved the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

During the Depression and World War II, Oakmont High School was a hub of activity. Mrs. Foster took pride in directing the junior class plays and making costumes and curtains for them.

At a dinner for teachers, she was seated next to the only single man at the party, J. Wallace Foster, a Bucknell University graduate who'd played quarterback for the football team. They fell in love and married in 1937.

She stopped teaching in 1944 and only returned for one school year, 1958-59, to help the district resolve a disciplinary problem. She returned for many reunions and maintained relationships with students until her last days.

"She always regretted that she gave it up. Her heart was in teaching," her daughter and only surviving relative said.

Visitation is tomorrow from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at English Funeral Home & Cremation Services, Oakmont. A funeral will be held there at 11 a.m. Thursday.