Lyn and Gary Foster were honored as the 2021 Grand Marshals of the annual Camanche Days parade on August 7th. The local Kiwanis Club nominated the Fosters, two long-time educators in our area because of their dedication to their students and their community. Lyn Foster is a founding member of our UU Fellowship, where she continues her dedication.
For more information about the Fosters, read the entire article from the August 7 Clinton Herald, below:
CAMANCHE — Gary and Linda Foster will be honored as the grand marshals of the Camanche Days parade. The parade begins at 11 a.m. Saturday and has a theme of “Spirit of Camanche.”
The Fosters, long-time educators, are described as Midwesterners at heart even though they went to an elementary and high school in a small town on Long Island, New York. Gary’s family moved there when his father was a pilot for Eastern Airlines and Linda’s father was an aeronautical engineer working at a defense company. It was in eighth-grade when they met and they have been together ever since.
It was at the age of 10 that Gary followed the family tradition and learned to play tennis from his dad and the VanNostrum brothers, who were nationally ranked players. In 1964, college brought them to Iowa and they never left.
His first job was as a guidance counselor at Keosauqua. When he wanted a job at a larger school, they looked around Eastern Iowa. When they arrived at Camanche and saw five beautiful tennis courts they knew they were home, they said. Camanche has been their home for 50 years.
The couple said they were fortunate to work with a great high school staff and to have such good support from principals Jim Pearson, Gary Cross and Len Bruce and superintendent, Larry Dennis.
“Our two sons had wonderful teachers from elementary all through high school. Their high school classes prepared them well for a degree from the Air Force Academy,” Linda said.
Gary was a counselor for 31 years and boys tennis coach for 34. During that time, he was selected as the Midwest tennis coach of the year four times and in 2003 he was selected National Tennis Coach of the year.
In 1983, Iowa started having team championships and in the next 13 years, teams from Camanche High won nine state championships, two runner ups and one third place. In his years of coaching there were many Camanche individual state champions and runner ups. Gary, with other parents, started a Junior wrestling program and he was a high school assistant wrestling coach for 17 years.
Linda loved teaching algebra, geometry, and later on trigonometry and analytic geometry for 28 years. She took pictures of all her classes and had them hanging up on classroom walls. Students always enjoyed finding family members in these pictures. She is also proud of the fact that when there were ninthgrade newspapers, math was voted their favorite class.
Upon retiring from teaching high school, she taught part time for 12 years at Clinton Community College. She serves on the town library board.
The couple would like to thank the Kiwanis Club for this recognition.
Gary and Linda Foster