Gladys Elva Witt Gilbert

1896* - 1987

Gladys Gilbert was born in Chicago, Illinois, the older of two children and the only daughter of Carl. C. and Rosabelle Snyder Witt. She attended Emmanuel Missionary College, now Andrews University, where she completed a degree in piano and organ in 1919. She was a student of Birt Summers and often spoke warmly of him and the training she had received under his tutelage.

Gilbert, a highly regarded teacher, began her career teaching piano at Cedar Lake Academy in Michigan in 1919. She married in the early 1920s and shortly after that taught piano and organ at Adelphian Academy in Holly, Michigan, until her retirement.

Gilbert was living in Holly, Michigan, at the time of her death at age ninety. AA moved and was merged with CLA that year. The combined schools are now known as Great Lakes Adventist Academy.

*Although her obituaries list 1897 as her birth date, her Cook County, Illinois, birth certificate lists 1896.

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Sources: Cook County, Illinois, Birth Certificate; 1910, 1920, and 1930 U.S. Federal Census records; C. Dwight Rhodes, 2007 (see under Birt Summers). Obituaries: The Lake Union Herald, 5 May 1987, 15; The Review and Herald, 4 June 1987, 36; Personal Knowledge.