In Memory of the Teacher Who Led Charge to Make the Ladybug Ohio’s State Insect

August 21, 2012 | 3:13 PM

Ruth Michaelis, an elementary school teacher in the Washington Local schools in Toledo, led a successful campaign to make Ohio’s official state insect the ladybug. Inspired by a 1973 Weekly Reader article about Maryland’s state insect, Michaelis’ second and third graders decided that Ohio’s state insect should be the ladybug partly because red ladybugs match Ohio’s official bird (the cardinal) and cultivated flower (the scarlet carnation), which are both red.

Ruth Michaelis died last week. She was 92.

Source: Toledoblade
Via: Toledo Blade

A period of intense study followed, both from books and from life, as students eagerly brought in ladybugs they found. They wrote letters to leading area legislators of both parties and forwarded petition signatures gathered at Franklin Park Mall. Students, dressed in homemade ladybug attire, including red capes with black dots — and carefully coached to speak up and speak clearly — testified before a legislative committee…

“The children are learning how, in a democracy, people work through their elected representatives to get bills passed in our legislature,” [Michaelis] told The Blade in 1973. “And that’s good.”

Read more at: www.toledoblade.com

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