By Dr. Frances “Toni” Draper
AFRO Publisher and CEO
When my sixth-grade teacher, Pauline Paysour, mailed me an envelope in July 1994, I nearly dismissed it as a kind gesture from the past. Inside were two treasures: her beautifully handwritten letter and a single story I’d written years earlier, titled “Elsbeth, An English Peasant Girl – By Frances M. Wood.”
She called it “going into her Treasure Chest” and returning “work” to as many of her former students as she could locate. What a gift!
I had no recollection of ever creating an Elsbeth. But there she was—a 12-year-old farm girl who solved a robbery and near-murder in early-1900s England. My Elsbeth wasn’t waiting to be rescued; she was the one doing the rescuing. After overhearing a threatening voice at her wealthy neighbor’s estate, she “quietly put down her milk pail and ran as fast as she could to the sheriff’s office.” There she calmed herself, helped the authorities and uncovered a cuff link marked C.K. that led to the culprit.
The story was written in cursive—a dying art in itself. I took great pride in my penmanship back then, the kind teachers still graded and celebrated. Her only correction was noting my habit of giving small m’s an extra hump. Otherwise, she left the words untouched.
Writing came naturally in my family. My grandfather, Dr. Carl Murphy, often said that if you could walk and talk, you could write. Expectations were high, but encouragement was even higher—a reminder that storytelling isn’t reserved for professionals. Whether you’re 12 or 92, it’s never too early or too late to put your ideas on paper.
Along with the story came a note, written in graceful longhand. After reminiscing about that sixth-grade classroom, she ended with a question that still inspires me:
“When are you going to stop cheating the public and publish your best seller?”
At the time, I was deep in another career, writing editorials and sermons rather than fiction. But her words have followed me, nudging me to keep publishing, keep sharing and keep believing that stories—whether told from a pulpit, a newsroom or a childhood desk—matter.
I didn’t pull the letter back out until decades later, when CBS began promoting a clever, crime-solving heroine named Elsbeth. Seeing the ads made me pause—and smile. After all, I had written my own Elsbeth long before they introduced theirs. I don’t even know where I got the name from. As far as I was concerned, she was simply a figment of my very active 12-year-old imagination. Maybe good characters never die; they simply evolve. My Elsbeth churned butter and solved crimes in the English countryside. Their Elsbeth wears bright coats, quotes case law and cracks New York murders. Same spirit, different century.
Good teachers have that same lasting power. They plant ideas that take root long after the classroom years have passed. I was blessed to have one like Pauline Paysour—and blessed, too, to come from a family that believed in the promise of public education and the power of words to change the world. There are still many dedicated and caring teachers today who continue that noble tradition.
Creativity has a way of looping back when we least expect it. The stories we dream up as children often lie dormant until life gives them new form. Maybe that’s why she kept my story all those years—not just because she believed I could write, but because she knew that faith, once planted, would bloom in its own season.
As I reread those pages, I’m struck not only by my young imagination but also by the kind of teacher who sees a child’s spark and keeps it safe until she’s ready to see it herself. Every writer, every leader, every dreamer owes a quiet debt to someone like Pauline Paysour—someone who believed first.
So here’s to Elsbeth, the peasant girl who started it all; to the teacher who saw promise in a sixth-grader’s scribbles; and to the grown-up who finally understands that maybe, just maybe, Mrs. Paysour was right.