Rita Agnes Cannan

Revered teacher taught manners, morals

Rita Cannan began her teaching career in rural Nevada towns and finished as a teaching principal for 27 years at a Reno elementary school.  In honor of her excellence, a Reno school was named for her in 1961.

Rita Agnes Cannan was born in Aspen, Colorado, on Christmas Eve to Michael and Mary Cannan in 1893. Her older siblings were Ellen (nicknamed Nellie), Erma and James Clyde. Years later Clyde was well known in Reno for his drugstore on Commercial Row. Henry Lester, Frances, Joseph and Roger all became younger siblings to Rita. They were a very loving family and faithful members of the Catholic Church.

Rita’s father was the foreman of the Smuggler Mine in Aspen until the mine caught on fire. The family moved to Goldfield, Nevada in 1905 where Rita’s father became shift manager at the Mohawk Mine.

Following high school, Rita attended and graduated from the first class of Nye County Normal school in 1914, with seven other students. Normal school, or teaching college, lasted only one year and the classwork consisted mostly of subjects on “how to teach.  The subjects they taught were those learned in grammar and high schools.

The high school class subjects taught in those days are listed in the Thesis of Procter Hug (1955), titled “The Development of the High School in Nevada.” They were Latin I, II, III, IV, elementary algebra, plane and solid geometry, bookkeeping, and history of England, Greece, Rome and the United States. Also taught were English classes in learning the meaning of thoughts, figures of speech (which emphasized metaphors and mythical spellings), and morals and manners.

Most areas of our country then required entrance exams to be taken prior to admitting a student to high school. The Nevada Legislature passed such a law in 1895, but there is no record of the examination in Nevada State Records and Archives.

After graduating from normal school in 1914, Rita taught one year in the mining camp of Columbia, Nevada, considered a suburb of Goldfield. She then moved to Round Mountain to teach for five years.

Cannan traveled each summer to Reno to take additional education classes at the University of Nevada in order to obtain a more advanced university teaching credential. She received her University of Nevada Normal Teaching Degree on May 7, 1918. This degree required two years of university coursework.

Moving back to Goldfield, she taught there for 10 years. One of the students Miss Cannan taught was Zenia Loncar Baird. Now in her 90s, Miss Zenia remembers her well. “She was a damned good teacher. She taught me in the seventh and eighth grades. I can still see her moving up and down the aisles correcting each student’s spelling at their desks.”

Cannan’s father, Michael, died in Goldfield in 1916, which left her mother a widow. Teachers were not expected to marry then (or perhaps were not allowed to teach if married). Rita made the decision at that time to stay single so she could take care of her mother.

In 1930 her family moved to Reno where Rita taught fifth and sixth grades at the Mary S. Doten School for one year. She was appointed school principal in 1931 and held that position for 27 years. For some of those years she was a teaching principal. Half of her day was spent teaching and the remainder was filled with administrative duties. One of the teachers who graduated from the University of Nevada spent her first year (1945) at the Mary S. Doten School. Marisquirena Olinghouse attributed her love of teaching to the excellent supervision of Rita Cannan. Kay Sanders, former NWHP website editor and a former student at Mary S. Doten, also remembers “Miss Cannan” as her principal in the 1940s. “She was strict but kind and students respected her.”

After her formal retirement in 1959, Cannan was a substitute teacher at Mary S. Doten for three more years, as well as one year at Sierra Vista Grammar School. Former students of hers who became well-known politicians were Alan Bible, former Nevada Attorney General (1942-1950), and U.S. Senator (1954-1974), and Nevada Congressman Walter Baring (1948-1952).

In her honor and memory, an elementary school in Reno was named for her in 1961 because she was so admired and loved. Her students fondly nicknamed her “the Cannan Ball”.

The state of Nevada was proud to have this excellent educator in our state. Although she started her education in Colorado, she received most of her education in Nevada. During her entire lifetime, she modeled the manners and morals that she taught her to her students. For most of her life her world revolved around Mary S. Doten School, its students, and parents.

Rita Cannan passed away in Reno, Nevada in October 26, 1981. She was mourned by many hundreds of students, parents and educators, and personified a true educator in every sense of the word.

Researched by Martha Goodrich. Written by Martha Goodrich. Updated (research) and edited by Patti Bernard. Posted to Website July 2017.