Senior alumni donate to Albany High School
James Watkinson (upper right) and Mary Wallmann (lower left), graduates of Albany High School, Class of 1945, donated $5,000 to Albany High School library recently. The twin brother and sister have made impressive achievenments – Mary was the valedictorian of her class, graduated from Univerisity of California at Berkeley, and then worked as a libarian for Albany High school for several decades; James graduated from Stanford University and later became a successful businessman in Virginia. Their mother, Ms. Kathleen Watkinson, was one of the first libarians for Albany in the early 20s.
James lives in Virginia now, while Mary still lives in Albany, where she has devoted most of her lifetime to the city’s schools. Besides her work for Albany High School, Mary was a founding member of the Albany Education Foundation, served as a Member of the Albany Board of Education from 1998 to 2002, and has been voluntarily teaching singing classes to kids at Cornell Elementary School for many years. Photo by Linjun Fan & Courtesy Albany Education Foundation.
[...] of Cornell Elementary School sang holiday songs cheerfully with Marilyn Chamberlain directing and Mary Wallmann playing the piano on their last day of school Friday. The two ladies have been teaching singing [...]
Mary was the librarian when I was a student at AHS. Kind, generous, friendly, helpful. She was an important part of that school. It’s good to see that she’s doing well, and she doesn’t look like she’s aged a day since I last saw her in the mid 1980s.