Gloria Butcosk, Haddon Twp. High teacher

Gloria Matthews Butcosk, 93, a former head of the home economics department at Haddon Township High School, died Tuesday, Jan. 6, at the Evergreens, a retirement community in Moorestown, where she had lived for the last nine years.

Sandy Rugart Howe, Class of 1972, said Mrs. Butcosk "was a friend of the family and my most influential teacher."

Mrs. Butcosk's classes focused on such necessary skills as proper nutrition, budgeting, and child-rearing.

"In this day and age, people go to the Internet to learn things," Howe noted. "But I don't know how you can replace the intangibles that a great teacher can pass on - self-esteem, self-confidence."

Born in Renton, in western Pennsylvania, Mrs. Butcosk grew up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont, graduated from Oakmont High School, and earned a bachelor's degree in home economics at what is now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in the 1940s..

She taught in the Pittsburgh area, then, after marrying in 1944, she and her husband, Richard A., lived in New Orleans, where he was a research chemist for a part of Shell Oil Co., their son, Richard G., said.

They moved to Jackson Heights in New York City, where he did similar research for Socony Mobil Oil Co. at a laboratory in Brooklyn.

When the firm closed the lab in 1960, it moved Mr. Butcosk to South Jersey, and in the mid-1960s, Mrs. Butcosk resumed teaching.

"At the time," her son said, "there weren't many women going into career fields," but teaching was "one of the more likely to go into."

His mother "retired in the early 1980s, after being head of the department for a decade," he said.

In retirement, "she volunteered for a while in several child-care centers because she was very gifted in dealing with little children," he said. "She had boundless energy."

When her daughter, now a teacher, was growing up, Mrs. Butcosk was a Girl Scout troop leader.

Besides her son, Mrs. Butcosk is survived by daughter Penny Judson, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Her husband, Richard A., died in 2011.

A visitation was set from 10 to 10:45 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 10, at the Church of Our Savior, Wayne Avenue and Wood Lane, Haddonfield, before an 11 a.m. funeral service. Interment is to be private.

Donations may be sent to www.girlscouts.org.

Condolences may be offered to the family at http://kainmurphy.com.