THE FACE BEHIND THE NAME.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - It's a long way from Enid, Okla., to Springfield, Ore., but you can get from one to the other by a single road.

That road is Yolanda Avenue, just north of Springfield's city limits. It's not more than a mile or two long, but it's connected to Oklahoma by way of a gregarious young lady of 80 who says the road is named for her.

Meet Yolanda Hunt, a retired elementary teacher of 32 years from Enid. Hunt made her first trip to Oregon this week to visit Yolanda Avenue and - most important for a teacher, of course - the school of the same name.

"Just curiosity," Hunt said, smiling. "Just curiosity."

By Hunt's account, a relative named Everett and his wife, Ruby, settled in the Springfield area in the 1950s, about the time folks were asked to help name a new street to the north.

In keeping with alphabetical order, the name had to start with "Y"; Ruby thought of her relative, the teacher back in Oklahoma, and the rest is history, Yolanda Hunt said.

"I really felt good about it," she recalled as she made the rounds at Yolanda Elementary on Monday with the help of a walker. "I felt like it was quite an honor and I wanted to come some day to see the school."

Although he couldn't confirm the account, Tom Drechsler of the Lane County surveyor's office said Hunt's recollection is typical of how road names occur.

"Somebody wants to name a road after their kid or their favorite uncle or whatever," Drechsler said. "That's a pretty normal way to go about naming roads."

Drechsler did find a petition signed by land owners in 1955 requesting the name Yolanda, and a subdivision - Yolanda Park - was started in 1964, he said.

That's the same year Yolanda Elementary was so named due to its location on Yolanda Avenue, Springfield schools Superintendent Steve Barrett said.

Yolanda refers to a violet flower, and there's even a planetary body named Yolanda, though you'll need advanced stargazing skills to locate it.

Nor are human Yolandas so easy to find. There were just four girls born "Yolanda" last year in Oregon, according to the state.

But in 1923, Yolanda Hunt's mother liked different names, and she may have named her daughter after reading the name "Yolanda" in the newspaper, Hunt said.

For a young teacher riding herd over a pack of second-graders, having a distinctive name was a lot better than being just another Tom, Dick or Harry.

"I'd call a kid's name and three or four children would look at me," Hunt said, laughing. "I knew when they said `Yolanda,' they just meant me."

Hunt has been planning this trip more or less since her retirement in 1978. But it was becoming more of a dream and less of a possibility as the years melted away, she struggled to beat cancer and death claimed many of those around her.

Then David Seeley, 36, a family friend who considers Hunt nothing less than a second mother, secured three weeks of vacation time from his newspaper job in southern Oklahoma.

For Seeley, it was an easy decision to escort Hunt on a cross-country flight to see the road and the school that share her name.

"The time's coming where she's not going to be able to do this anymore," Seeley said. "If you don't do it now, you may never."

Hunt has a stronger claim to the road name, of course, but it's the school that's closest to this retired teacher's heart. She was made an honorary Yolanda Elementary Cougar, and she toured the facility.

Hunt found the classroom design "more modern" than she'd expected. But some things never change - the feel of chalk in your hand, for example, when you write on the blackboard.

Monday's lesson, which Hunt imparted with a veteran teacher's practiced handwriting, was one in history:

"Mrs. Yolanda Hunt from Enid, Oklahoma was here on Monday, June 16, 2003," Hunt wrote. "I finally got to visit the school that was indirectly named for me."

CAPTION(S):

Yolanda Avenue, just north of Springfield's city limits, was named in the 1950s.