News

Longtime teacher Mary Valentine Mims dies at age 90

By Bill Moss, Published: July 16, 2014

Mary Valentine Mims, whose 37-year teaching career spanned the era of desegregation and resulted in hundreds of girls learning how to cook and sew in home-ec, has died at age 90.

Born in May 1924, Mary Valentine lost her mother at age 9 and her father when she was a teenager. After earning a bachelor's degree in home economics from N.C. Central University in Durham in 1948, Mims began her teaching career. She was married to Evans Mims, who was assistant principal of the Ninth Avenue School, which educated black children before Hendersonville schools integrated. He died in 1964.
"She played an influential role in the lives of many young people while teaching through the time of school integration," Blue Ridge Community College President Molly Parkhill said in 2013 when Mims was inducted into the Henderson County Education Hall of Fame.
Known as "Mama Mims" to a generation of Hendersonville High School students from 1965 until her retirement in 1985, Mims made sure that girls in home ec knew how to sew a zipper and hem a dress.
"Sewing was by far my mother's forte," her daughter, Renee, said in a Hall of Fame profile the Education Foundation published in 2013. "Her handiwork looked like it was from a store."
The first woman appointed to lead a grand jury in Henderson County, Mims was included among the top 50 female leaders of Henderson County in a 1996 tribute by WHKP radio called "Her Story."
Mims instilled in her daughters the value of education.
Renee Mims Payne, who holds degrees from Cornell University and Penn State, is associate dean of graduate admissions for Shippensburg (Penn.) University. Yvonne Mims Evans, who holds a Duke law degree, is a Superior Court judge in the 26th Judicial District in Mecklenburg County.
The city of Hendersonville honored Mims and teacher Hannah L. Edwards on June 20, 2012, the same day that School Board members and others dedicated a marker for the Sixth Avenue and Ninth Avenue schools, which served black students in Hendersonville from 1916 until 1965. Mims served 25 years on the Blue Ridge Community College Board of Trustees, from 1983 to 2007.
Information on services for Mims was not yet available.