Evelyn Carswell-Bing, educator and a founder of Children's Museum Tucson, dies

Evelyn Carswell-Bing, a longtime educator and a founder of the Children’s Museum Tucson, died March 18. She was 99.

Carswell-Bing died of natural causes at Casa de la Luz Hospice. Family and friends were with her prior to her death, said her son, Ron Carswell.

“Evelyn was one of a group of women who in 1986 started what would become the Children’s Museum Tucson,” said Teresa Truelsen, a museum spokeswoman.

“Her experience as an educator is the foundation of the museum’s mission,” said Truelsen. “She believed in the importance of engaging young children from the very beginning in meaningful learning experiences. Her belief will continue to guide the museum into the future,” said Truelsen, recalling how Carswell-Bing and her son would bring packages of sweets and a donation for the museum each month.

Carswell-Bing’s “pride in the museum and all it has become in its 32 years became our pride as well — energizing us and pushing us to carry on Evelyn’s vision every day,” said Truelsen. The museum has a second site in Oro Valley that opened in 2015.

Carswell described his mother as a “4-foot-10 dynamo” who was an educator at heart who “taught a lot of people at different levels. The range of friendships she has here are enormous.”

He reminisced about the family’s love for music. His mother played the piano and her father taught her to sight read music. She taught the skill to her son.

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“I was fortunate to record a jazz album with my grandfather in 1965. He played the piano and I the electric bass, and another musician played the drums,” said Carswell, adding that his son also is passionate about music, developing a website blog, Music for Robots, for new bands and independent producers.

Carswell-Bing was born Feb. 1, 1919, in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was reared.

She enlisted in the Navy WAVES, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, as a lieutenant during World War II and served as a communications officer before she was honorably discharged in 1946, said Carswell. She married her first husband, David Carswell, also a Naval officer, after the war at the Naval Academy in Maryland.

The couple moved to Boulder, Colorado, and while her husband was studying for his doctorate in botany at the University of Colorado and working summers as a park ranger at the Grand Canyon, Carswell-Bing took classes at Northern Arizona University and earned her bachelor’s degree in the 1950s. She later earned a master’s in administration from NAU, and a doctorate in education from the University of Arizona.

She taught in the Amphitheater Public Schools — at Prince and Keeling elementary schools, and was principal at Harelson and then Walker elementary schools. At both latter schools she wrote the schools’ songs, Carswell said. At Walker, she “worked with the architect and co-designed the school buildings as large open classrooms with multi-curriculum spaces and team teaching,” he said.

Carswell-Bing’s experiences led her to Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s where she served as a curriculum specialist at the National Education Association. She also was a consultant with the Kettering Foundation working with schools in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama and Colombia. In 1970, she was hired by the UA College of Education as a professor until she retired in 1986.

A private celebration of her life will be held at the downtown Children’s Museum Tucson in June.