VOORHEESVILLE — Bernadene M. Bowers, a kindergarten teacher honored by the state, died on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023, at St. Peter’s Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. She was 76.

“She was a very warm, very cordial person,” said her husband, Donald L. Bowers. “A tall gal, about 5 feet, 9 inches, she was one of the most beautiful women you ever set your eyes on. When she’d go into a room, the room would light up.”

Whether she was ballroom dancing or teaching kindergartners, he said, she was charismatic.

Mrs. Bowers was born on Dec. 8, 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio, the only child of Helen and Frank Novak.

Her father, recently discharged from the United States Air Force, met her mother, who was visiting from Pennsylvania, at a dance in Cleveland. “It was love at first sight,” said Mr. Bowers.

Mrs. Novak had grown up in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania and was a classmate of Perry Como, Mr. Bowers said; as a teenager, she babysat for Bobby Vinton.

Mr. Novak worked for a plant in Cleveland that made bearings for motors.

Ms. Bowers attended Catholic schools in Cleveland and was an excellent student. She went on to graduate from Kent State University in Ohio. “She specialized in early childhood development and got top honors at Kent State,” said Mr. Bowers.

In college, she met the man who would become her first husband, John Fisk, a Cleveland native. “He was a brilliant young man and had four offers” for graduate school, Mr. Bowers said. The couple decided on the University at Albany because it was closest to Cleveland.

While at UAlbany, Mr. Fisk won a national competition that sent the couple on world travels, Mr. Bowers said. “John came up with the idea of transporting goods on flatbed trains instead of trucks,” he said.

While they were in Switzerland, the young couple learned to ski — something Mrs. Bowers enjoyed for the rest of her life.

After they returned home to their apartment on North Main Street in Voorheesville, the couple bought land on Swift Road to build a house. “He cut down over 300 trees on the property” said Mr. Bowers of Mr. Fisk. “John was quite a craftsman and was building the house himself.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Bowers started her teaching career with the Bethlehem schools, which lasted over 30 years; she taught kindergarten at both the Hamagrael and Clarksville elementary schools.

Once their new house was framed, the couple decided to take a break and go skiing in Vermont. “After a day of skiing, she wanted to stay overnight but John wanted to drive back to start sheetrocking,” said Mr. Bowers. “She woke up after being thrown 100 feet out the back window of their car. The car was crushed and her husband was severely brain compromised.”

After a brief time at the Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital in Schenectady, Mr. Fisk was placed at the Helen Hayes Hospital near New York City.

Mr. Bowers went on, “There she was with an unfinished house and a husband who couldn’t speak. Bernadene would get out every Friday afternoon from teaching and drive down there with his books from the University at Albany. She’d read from his books into his ear … She stood behind him. She would not let him go.”

Later, they divorced as it was “necessary legally,” he said; Mr. Fisk died in 2012 in an institution in his home state of Ohio.

After Mrs. Bowers’s father died of a heart attack, she took her mother on a cruise in 1996 to cheer her up, Mr. Bowers said. That is where they met each other, on the cruise ship.

“After we said good-bye at the end of the cruise, I didn’t see her for 12 years,” Mr. Bowers said.

At that time, Mrs. Bowers was working part-time for a Delmar real-estate firm and was at an open house in Clifton Park when she heard Mr. Bowers’s voice on the radio. “I’ve been a radio man all my life,” he said.

She called the station and asked the disc jockey if he was the same Donald Bowers she had met on the cruise ship 12 years before. He was.

“We got together for a cup of coffee and were married in 2008,” he said.

Mrs. Bowers was dedicated to her teaching career and very creative in her methods, he said. “She had her kindergartners doing the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso,” he said.

Mrs. Bowers won the 1996 New York State Department of Education Better Beginnings Award. The award, given annually, recognizes “elementary teachers who are gifted in finding and nurturing the strengths of each individual student.”

Mr. Bowers said his wife’s commitment in teaching was lifelong and passionate. “Before she got dementia, she was working on a book about teaching children properly to read,” he said. “I have the rough draft.”

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Bernadene M. Bowers is survived by her loving husband of 15 years, Donald L. Bowers of Voorheesville; her stepdaughter, Falin Bowers of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and her stepson, Clint W. Stomski of Ballston Spa.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association - Northeastern New York Chapter.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer