Media center dedicated to educator

It's fitting that Francine Coleman Postell lives on Postell Avenue. She has, after all, lived in the town of Oakland most of her life, having been born at home in a little house that once stood on West Colonial Drive, just south of Oakland Avenue Charter School.

She has dedicated most of her life to the small town — as a citizen and an elected official — and, in later years, to the young people in Ocoee — as a teacher at Ocoee Junior High/Middle School for more than two decades.

Oakland officials celebrated Postell's service to her community May 30 during the unveiling of a plaque dedicating the charter school's media center to the former educator.

Family and friends, school staff and students were present for the program.

Several people spoke, including Commissioner Joseph McMullen, who said, “When you think of Ms. Postell, you think of someone who gives her all.”

She was humbled by the honor.

“I am thrilled and pleased to be the recipient of this award, the dedication of the library,” Postell said. “If you would ask me my life story, the only story I could tell you is serving mankind.”

The media center dedication is the latest in a program established by the Oakland Town Commission to recognize citizens who have made important contributions to the town. In addition to living most of her life in Oakland, serving on the town commission and teaching several generations of students, Postell has been an active member of her church, Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal, where a scholarship is established in her name.

RETURNING TO HER ROOTS

Francine Postell, now 84, was No. 14 of the 19 children, including three sets of twins, born to the Rev. Samuel and Gertrude Herriott Coleman. Several were stillborn, a few died in infancy — 12 lived to adulthood. She and three others are still living.

Postell and her siblings grew up in an area of Oakland called Sadler's Place, located on Oakland Avenue; her father did farm work for Calvin and Frances Sadler, and her mother was their maid.

When Postell was 7, a childless couple in town asked her parents if she could live with them.

“My mom let them take me, and I started calling them Mom and Dad,” Postell said. “I had more opportunities to do different things than my other siblings, so I look at my adoption as a blessing.”

When they divorced five years later, Postell moved to Orlando with the man she called Dad. She returned to Oakland when she was 14, resuming her life under the same roof as her birth parents and siblings. Her birth father died the next year.

During her junior high years, Postell babysat a local family in their summer home in Georgia.

“That was money to buy my school clothes for the next school year,” she said. “We'd go to Winter Garden to the 10-cent store and buy just about anything you wanted. That and Leader Department Store.”

After attending Oakland Elementary School, she went to Winter Garden School for junior high.

Postell said she wanted to continue her studies in college after high school but knew her parents couldn't afford such an expense with a large family. At age 22, she took employment with the Sadlers in 1954, mainly cooking for the family.

During that time, she married Henry Postell and had two sons, one of whom is deceased. When he relocated to Connecticut, she moved, too, but she left her boys in Florida in the care of her mother-in-law.

A year later, homesick for warmer weather and her boys, Postell returned to Oakland; Henry remained up north. Their marriage lasted just seven years.

She went back to work for the Sadlers, too, and was with them a total of 25 years. In 1960, her family grew again when she adopted a 6-month-old boy.

SERVING HER COMMUNITY

Postell said that after her employers passed away, she decided it was time to get a college degree. She graduated from Florida Southern College, in Lakeland, with a degree in sociology with a minor in political science.

She would begin and end her teaching career at the same school: Ocoee Junior High/Middle School. Retirement came in 1998.

In 1987, Postell was elected to the mayor's seat in Oakland. She served one term but said she had to resign when she developed diabetes.

“It was a lot of stress, so I had to give something up, and I said, 'Well, my teaching job is the one that's feeding me,'” she said.

A few years later, she was back at the table, completing another town commissioner's term.

Postell never returned to the Town Commission, but she served the community in many other ways, including with Orange County Community Action and HeadStart. She has received numerous awards, and citations and is listed in “Who's Who Among American Teachers.”

Her latest honor, the media center plaque, is humbling, she said.

“I think it was very touching,” she said. “Just to know that the community thought that much of me.”

She is now content enjoying a quieter life with family and friends. She is headed to Kentucky to visit her brother, and then one sister is spending a month with her in Oakland before the two of them fly to New York to visit the other sister.

In addition to the siblings and sons, Postell has five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

In her spare time, she relaxes by reading and writing. She's also a serious Orlando Magic basketball fan.

Contact Amy Quesinberry at [email protected].