The Morehead Writing Project community lost a friend and leader Saturday, Jan. 11, when Vickie Moriarity died at her home after a brief battle with ovarian cancer. There will be a celebration of Vickie’s life at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 25, at Bethesda Church (3339 Winchester Rd, Mt Sterling, KY 40353). The service will also be live streamed via the Bethesda Church Facebook page for those unable to attend in person.
Vickie loved writing and teaching writing and modeled those passions in her classroom and through many leadership positions with the Morehead Writing Project. She was a coordinator for both invitational and online summer institutes and worked with Deanna Mascle and Liz Prather to craft a manual for the National Writing Project about the online summer institute model. Vickie was also a leader in the multiple iterations of our site’s involvement with the National Writing Project’s C3WP work. In 2017 Vickie organized one of our most successful Writing Eastern Kentucky Conferences. That same year she worked with Deanna Mascle and Misty Johnson to win a prestigious LRNG Innovators Challenge grant for Bath County Middle School. Their project, Making A Future for All: Connecting Passion To Profession, was one of only 10 selected from the highly competitive national grant application process. Vickie also led many learning communities for the Morehead Writing Project and mentored countless teachers at every level and across content areas on how to embed and support comprehensive literacy in the classroom. It is impossible to quantify the students that Vickie’s life and work touched and the many fellow educators she inspired and guided. Learn more about Vickie’s life through her obituary and Paul Prather’s Jan. 16 column: A church member’s life and death showed exactly how God works in our hearts. You can also read the many tributes left on both her obituary page and her Facebook page.
“I loved Vickie for the many ways she brought joy into my life,” said Site Director Deanna Mascle. “But the thing I will miss the most is her powerful ‘YES’ when I asked her to join me for a meal, to write, or to take on a complicated project. I always knew that I could count on Vickie as a friend and an advocate for students and teachers. There are so many reasons to admire the way Vickie led her life but one of the most important is that she left the world a better place than she found it through her example and her works. I will miss her more than I can say.”
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Bethesda Church, P O. Box 291, Mt. Sterling, KY 40353. Please specify the Vickie Moriarity Education Fund in the memo.