:PARA 2PAR@ ` *TEXT ` Locke, Bessie1865╨1952educatorBorn on August 7, 1865, in West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts, Bessie Locke grew up there and in Brooklyn, New York, where she attended public schools. She later took some business courses at Columbia University. In her teens she worked as a bookkeeper in her father╒s fabric-printing factory, and later she managed an uncle╒s millinery store in North Carolina. Her interest in educational reform found early expression in the organization of industrial classes for women under the aegis of the Brooklyn King╒s Daughters Circle, of which she was for a time president. About 1892 Locke visited a kindergarten conducted by a friend who had studied with Maria Kraus-BoeltÄ. The effect of the kindergarten on the immigrant children of the tenement district in which it operated astonished her, and she became convinced that the kindergarten was of a potential importance to the future health of society equal to that of the church. Among a circle of influential citizens she collected money and formed the East End Kindergarten Union of Brooklyn. From 1896 to 1923 she was financial secretary and later trustee of the Brooklyn Free Kindergarten Society, and from 1899 she was financial secretary of the New York Kindergarten Society. Her talent as a fund-raiser was remarkable. She raised $700,000 for mission kindergartens and for five permanently endowed private kindergartens and tapped John D. Archbold, vice-president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, for $250,000 for a community center and headquarters building for the New York Kindergarten Society. In 1909, after three years of groundwork, Locke led in founding the National Association for the Promotion of Kindergarten Education, which in 1911 became the National Kindergarten Association. She was a director and the executive secretary of the association for the rest of her life. In 1912 the National Kindergarten Association was asked to assist in establishing a kindergarten division in the U.S. Bureau of Education, and from 1913 to 1919 Bessie Locke was chief of the division. In 1917 she inaugurated in the division a series of home education articles for parents. From 1919 the articles were published by the National Kindergarten Association, and by 1952 they had circulated to an estimated 38 million people. From 1913 to 1922 she chaired the kindergarten extension division of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. During her long career her efforts led directly to the opening of 3260 kindergartens enrolling 1.6 million pupils. She also served as a director of the National Council of Women from 1921 to 1946 and as honorary vice-president thereafter. From 1920 she was on the governing board of the National College of Education of Evanston, Illinois. Locke died in New York City on April 9, 1952. ╓styl `
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