Janet Lucille Sorg Stoltzfus (May 24, 1931 – March 5, 2004) was an American educator. As a teacher married to an American diplomat, she established the Ta'iz Cooperative School, the first foreign school in
North Yemen.
The
elementary-level classes included local Yemeni children and the children of embassy families.
Early life
Janet Sorg was born in
East Orange, New Jersey
East Orange is a City (New Jersey), city in Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 69,612. The city was List of municipalities in ...
, the daughter of Harrison Theodore Sorg and Mildred Hoops Sorg (later Blasius). Her father was an insurance company executive. She attended the
Kent Place School in
Summit, New Jersey
Summit is a city in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is located on a ridge in northern- central New Jersey, within the Raritan Valley and Rahway Valley regions in the New York metropolitan area. At the 2010 United Sta ...
, and earned a bachelor's degree in English from
Wellesley College
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
in 1952. She was a member of
Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a
Bachelor of Letters degree at
Trinity College Dublin in 1953.
Career
Sorg was teaching English at the
Beirut College for Women
The Lebanese American University (LAU) ( ar, الجامعة اللبنانية الأميركية) is a secular and private American university located in Lebanon. It is chartered by the board of regents of the University of the State of New Y ...
when she met her husband, American diplomat
William A. Stoltzfus Jr. She accompanied her husband to postings in
Ethiopia,
Kuwait,
Egypt,
Libya,
United Arab Emirates,
Oman,
Qatar,
Bahrain,
Saudi Arabia,
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
, and
Yemen.
"A typical
Foreign Service couple of middle rank are crew-cut William Stoltzfus Jr. and his delicately pretty wife Janet," wrote columnist
Jack Anderson in 1962.
With her husband leading the U.S.
legation
A legation was a diplomatic representative office of lower rank than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an ambassador, a legation was headed by a Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, minister. Ambassadors diplomatic rank, out ...
based in
Taiz that formed the center of
United States–Yemen relations
In the years after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, Yemen became a key site for U.S. intelligence gathering and drone attacks on Al-Qaeda. According to the 2012 U.S. Global Leadership Report, 18% of Yemen ...
at the time, the Stoltzfuses were in North Yemen from 1959 to 1961.
There, she was the sole teacher at the Ta'iz Cooperative School, a one-room co-educational elementary program she founded in her home. The school originally intended to educate the young children of embassy families, but soon including Yemeni children as well, with permission from the ruler, imam
Ahmad bin Yahya
, succession = King and Imam of Yemen
, image = YemenAhmad.jpg
, image_size =
, caption =
, reign = 17 February 1948 – 19 September 1962
, predecessor = Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din
, successor = ...
.
It was the first foreign and non-religious school in north Yemen.
[Lillian P. Mullin (1994, 1997]
Oral history interviews with William A. Stoltzfus Jr.
''Yemen Country Reader''. A British woman, Joan Bailey, wife of the British diplomat
Ronald Bailey, helped at the Taiz school, by teaching sewing and knitting classes.
In 1997, Ambassador Stoltzfus gave an oral history interview and emphasized his opinion that "our most valuable contribution while we were in Yemen was my wife's school."
During her husband's other postings, Stoltzfus was head teacher at the English School in Kuwait and the American School in Damascus. She worked with an enrichment program for preschoolers in Ethiopia, and coordinated volunteers for a children's program under the auspices of the Kuwait Handicapped Society.
She also founded a newsletter for senior citizens in London in the 1980s, titled ''The Ellesmere Gazette''.
After they left the
United States Foreign Service in 1976, the Stoltzfus home in
Princeton, New Jersey, featured "crosses from Ethiopia, copperware from Iran, royal Arabic seals from Bahrein, a brass chest and a tall exquisite coffee pot from Saudi Arabia, and a massive hand-carved door from Kuwait", all souvenirs of their overseas service.
Janet Stoltzfus taught English and religion at
Princeton Day School
Princeton Day School is a private coeducational day school located in Princeton, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. The largest division is the Upper School (grades 9–12), ...
. One of her students at Princeton Day School was
Erik Menéndez, and she was one of the former teachers called as a witness at his murder trial.
Personal life
Janet Sorg married William A. Stoltzfus Jr. in 1954.
They had five children, William III, Philip, Winifred, Susan,
and Rebecca, all raised in part as embassy children.
"We subsisted on cans of baked beans from the U.S. military base in Ethiopia," Stoltzfus recalled, "We had a lot of liquor, though."
She died from cancer
in 2004, at the age of 72, in Princeton, New Jersey.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoltzfus, Janet Sorg
1931 births
2004 deaths
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
Kent Place School alumni
People from East Orange, New Jersey
People from Princeton, New Jersey
Wellesley College alumni
American women educators