NEW PALESTINE —The New Palestine Education Foundation has announced its Distinguished Alumni Award winners for this year, and they include a barrier-breaking judge and two well-known educators.
The three people selected are Vivian Sue (Blodgett) Shields, class of 1955; Al Cooper, class of 1979; and Darlene Seifert, class of 1982. Two of the three, Cooper and Seifert, still are connected to the school from which they graduated. Cooper is the athletic director at New Palestine High School, while Seifert is a science teacher at the high school. Shields had a long career on the bench as a county judge and then on the state appeals court.
The three were recognized during a recent Southern Hancock School Board meeting. The alumni awards recognize outstanding NPHS alumni for their work and service in their profession and/or their community.
Seifert is finishing up her 31st year at NPHS and was thrilled to hear she had been recognized.
“I was honored to be presented this award,” Seifert said. “There are so many amazing folks who have walked the hallways of NPHS — that to be included in a notable group is amazing.”
Seifert has been a Dragon most of her life and wouldn’t change the association for anything.
“I have been given the opportunity to work with my classmates’ children and now children of my former students — which is an unbelievable feeling.” she said. “I can’t imagine spending my career anywhere else — NPHS has always been home.”
While she still loves working with the students, she joked that the hardest part has been the fact that students remain the same age as she continues to grow older.
Like Seifert, Cooper’s connection to NPHS has been a life-long relationship.
“I am very humbled by the recognition,” Cooper said. “New Palestine has always been my home, and I am super proud to tell people where I am from.”
Cooper has lived in New Palestine for 56 years, since he was 4 years old, and never saw a reason to leave. He decided to make NPHS the place he wanted to make a living fairly early as a teacher, and he never left.
“I feel fortunate to be able to say that in my time at NPHS, 35 years in all, 24 in the classroom and 11 as A.D., it has never been a job,” Cooper said.
This is not the first honor for Cooper, who was acknowledged by the Indiana Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, District 4, as the Athletic Director of the Year, recognized by his peers, in 2017.
Shields was born in Kentucky but grew up in New Palestine.
After high school, Shields attended Ball State Teachers College in Muncie. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1959 and enrolled in the Indiana University School of Law. Shields, the only woman in her class, received her law degree in 1961.
After spending a year as an attorney and regional counsel for the Internal Revenue Service in Ohio, Shields became Indiana’s deputy attorney general. In 1964, she decided to run, at the age of 24, for judge of Hamilton County Superior Court. She won the election, becoming the first woman to ever be elected a general jurisdiction judge in the state. Shields served until 1978, when she was appointed to the Indiana Court of Appeals, becoming the first woman to serve on that court. She remained on the court until 1994, when she was selected to serve as U.S. Magistrate for the Southern District of Indiana. She was the first woman to hold that position as well. She retired in 2007.
Shields also served on the Indianapolis Bar Association’s commission on Marion County courts; has been secretary and director of the Indiana Lawyers Commission’s section on sentencing appeals; and has served on various committees of the Hamilton County Bar Association.
