Joan Durgin, who in a career with Toledo Public Schools focused on improving students’ overall health and helped found a school for pregnant and parenting girls, died Dec. 24 in a skilled-care unit at Piper Shores retirement community in Scarborough, Maine. She was 80.

She had dementia, her family said. She and her husband, Rod Durgin, had moved from Ottawa Hills to Piper Shores in July.

Mrs. Durgin began her TPS career in 1972 as a family life specialist. She retired in 2006 after 18 years as the district’s coordinator of health services.

She helped establish the Polly Fox Academy, named for Pauline Reulein Fox, who formerly directed the TPS Family Life Education Center and whom Mrs. Durgin regarded as a mentor.

The school opened in 2003 as a TPS-sponsored charter school. Mrs. Durgin traced the path to the early 1990s and two sixth-grade girls who were pregnant.

“We knew that it was important to find an alternative spot for them,” Mrs. Durgin told The Blade in 2008, ahead of her induction to the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame. “Being pregnant, being a teenager, being a parent creates major complications. While our girls handle it well, it sets up some major barriers in their lives.”

The academy aimed to have the girls receive high-school diplomas while also receiving parent education and career skills. 

“She loved those kids and working with them,” Mr. Durgin said. “We’d go around town and run into these kids, now working, graduated. They couldn’t have been more delightful toward her.”

Mrs. Durgin remained as the academy’s development director until it closed in 2018.

“She felt this was her calling, knowing if she could help these girls graduate from high school, that would help increase the chances they would have a better life,” said Susan Telljohann, a retired University of Toledo professor of school-health education who served on the Polly Fox board.

They collaborated on several TPS projects through the years, including a grant to hire more school nurses, and became friends. 

“You could not say no to Joan, because she was so passionate about what she did,” Ms. Telljohann said.

Also in 2008, Mrs. Durgin was honored by the YWCA of Greater Toledo at the annual Milestone Awards. In 2013, she was among four local recipients of the Jefferson Award. She received a distinguished community leadership award from Leadership Toledo in 1998.

“She was just well respected, and you knew she had the very best intentions for kids in everything she did for the schools,” said Brenda Facey, a Toledo Board of Education member from 1989 until 1997, including one year as president.

Mrs. Durgin found honors and awards humbling.

“She was not a person who wanted recognition necessarily. She wanted the world to be better,” stepdaughter Meredith Durgin said.

Ms. Telljohann said: “She had no ego. She was doing this for very altruistic reasons. She had such a calm presence about her. People trusted her.”

Besides guiding an increase in school nurses, Mrs. Durgin helped develop clinics in central Toledo schools. She had a leading role and navigated controversy as the district’s human growth and development curriculum was constructed and put in place.

“She just was determined to proceed, because this was going to be beneficial to the students in our district,” Mrs. Facey said. “What was so special about her was she maintained decorum and was very respectful of other folks and their ideas, but she also was very committed to doing the work.”

Mrs. Durgin’s work focused on making it possible for children to learn by improving their health.

“It isn't just teaching. It's so much more. It's not just their educational health, it's their mental health, it's their physical health,” she told The Blade in 2003.  “Families are struggling more. As families struggle, children struggle and maybe don't get all they need. It's left to the schools to pick up the pieces.” 

Community efforts included work with the Toledo Area AIDS Task Force, the Toledo Day Nursery, and Toledo Children’s Hospital. She’d been a Junior League of Toledo board member.

Joan Prentice Durgin was born Dec. 7, 1942, to Betty and Robert Lipton in New Orleans, where her father was stationed in the Navy. When his World War II service took him to sea, she and her mother returned to the Cleveland area. 

She was a graduate of Shaker Heights High School and received a bachelor’s degree from Lake Forest College in Illinois, where she met her first husband, Peter Handwork, who was from the Toledo area.

While heading a YMCA youth program in Toledo she made contacts that led to a job in TPS.

“She was interested in the other person, and being in education was natural for her,” Mr. Durgin said.

She golfed at Inverness Club, where she liked to swim during the summer. Her chocolate chip cookies were prized. Her garden featured roses, but “anything she touched blossomed,” Ms. Durgin said, “kind of like what she did in her professional life.”  

She had a master of education degree from UT. 

Surviving are her husband, Rod Durgin, whom she married July 15, 1983; daughters, Courtney Kuhn and Lindsey Hickey; son, Peter Handwork; stepdaughters, Meredith Durgin and Leslie Durgin Szymczak, and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service and celebration of life event will be held in May at the Toledo Club. Arrangements are by Ansberg-West Funeral Directors.

The family suggests tributes to Planned Parenthood; the Alzheimer's Association, or St. Michael's in the Hills Church, Ottawa Hills.

First Published January 8, 2023, 5:00 a.m.