Alabama Women's Hall of Fame
Mrs. Elizabeth Burford Bashinsky embodied the words "mother", "educator", "church member", "writer", "orator", "club woman", "philanthropist", and "lady".
A native of Dixon Springs, Tennessee, Elizabeth Burford Bashinsky was born the youngest of six children of Major Robert Allen Burford and Mary Elizabeth Lowe Burford. She graduated with honors from Columbia Institute in Tennessee and moved to Troy, Alabama as an elementary teacher at the Troy State Normal School in 1888. After teaching for two years, she married Leopold M. Bashinsky. The Bashinskys were the parents of three children.
Even though she retired from teaching upon her marriage, education remained the driving force of Bashinsky's life. In 1915, she was instrumental in establishing a scholarship program through the United Daughters of the Confederacy which continues to help educate Alabama youth today. Not only did she ensure monetary means for educating young people, Bashinsky also gave of her time and home. In 1930, she served as a member of the National Advisory Committee on Illiteracy and as the chair of the Ways and Means Committee of the illiteracy group in Pike County, even persuading the county to finance twelve schools. She opened her home to students attending Troy Normal School during the Depression years of the 1930s, thus enabling many students to remain in college. During the World War II years of 1940-1944, two young English girls resided with the Bashinsky family.
Elizabeth Bashinsky was active in the Woman's Missionary Union (WMU) of the First Baptist Church of Troy and also served the State WMU Executive Board. She and her family were ardent supporters of the Baptist Children's home at Troy. As a Baptist and as one who placed much emphasis on education, Mrs. Bashinsky served as a trustee of Judson College for forty years.
Dr. C. B. Smith, former president of Troy State, said of Bashinsky that he could "think of no other woman who served other people so well and over so long a period of time." So dedicated was she to education that both the University of Alabama and Judson College awarded her the Algernon Sidney Sullivan Award for noble human qualities.
Bashinsky led many civic and service organizations, including as president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy on local, state, and national levels. As an active participant in the federated club movement in the early days of this century, she won a number of club writing awards with short poems which carry the initials "E. B. B." She was also a gifted speaker willing to speak on topics ranging from the U.S. South to "The Moral Effects of George Eliot's Works."
In a speech before the Alabama Baptist Convention in 1929, she said of young people, and especially of young women, "Their future possibilities are our present responsibilities, and what potential possibilities are wrapped up in those latent powers."
Other Inductees
Alabama Women's Hall of Fame