"Please don't ever put me in that category. I'm a simple lady," Galvin said upon hearing the suggestion that she is now a celebrity.
She becomes the fourth John J. McVicar Distinguished Service Award honoree along with Rocky Hill High School's first athletic director, Dave Dellert; Little League softball organizer and volunteer Jeff Thomsen; and Rocky Hill sports benefactor Butch Surwilo.
Galvin will be recognized for her career of service to Rocky Hill student-athletes at the Rocky Hill Athletic Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Saturday, June 2 beginning at 6 p.m. at the Rocky Hill Marriott.
Tickets for the event, which includes dinner and a cash bar, are available for $50 and may be reserved by calling Pete Egan at 529-4646.
Galvin, who will be 80 years of age next February, can still be spotted in grocery stores around town bumping into former students.
"I say, 'You kept me young' - those are my words to them - and they know it, you kept me young," she says.
Galvin, an astute conversationalist, said she now loves to fish, is an avid gardener and cook, and also takes care of a home on Cape Cod she's owned for 26 years. The activities keep her busy, a just reward for her many years keeping Rocky Hill students active through physical education.
Galvin was a key figure in developing women's programs at the high school at a time when no funds were available and before Title IX.
She began teaching in Rocky Hill, remarkably, in 1949 after attending Sargent College at Boston University as a phys. ed. major, at one of the nation's premier programs, with a minor in dance.
The cafeteria and gym shared space at the old Center Junior High in town when Galvin began teaching in Rocky Hill behind the firehouse and Congregational church near Glastonbury Avenue and Main and Elm streets.
"I was it. I was it. I was it. They had to put up with me fall, winter, spring," she said with a perpetual partial giggle in her voice.
At the time, when Rocky Hill's high school students attended Wethersfield High, "Everyone pitched in and set up the tables (for lunch) and the women would cook all that good food for us and we'd set up the tables again afterwards."
"And there was no wooden floor (in the gym). There was no wooden floor," she said.
No buses, either, so parents and teachers helped out by driving students to and from school and later, across the region to attend sporting events.
"The parents would pack five kids in their car. I would pack five kids in my car and away we went," Galvin said.
Despite the somewhat spartan conditions, Galvin said she received great cooperation from the town's Board of Ed.. "I was very grateful. I was very fortunate. It was an exceptional community to be in," she said about Rocky Hill.
Rocky Hill hosted play days and intramurals in Galvin's early years in town, inviting two, three, or four schools to compete. Afterwards, there would be a party. "It was very old-fashioned," she said.
In 1960, the new high school was built including both junior and senior high students at first. The school had a better gymnasium and allowed for greater interscholastic competition. "We went anywhere they would have us," Galvin said, even sending an archery team to Storrs.
"Our kids...if they didn't win a game they were the best sports on the floor and I mean it," Galvin said.
Galvin said Rocky Hill had a quality that remains special to this day.
She said she still runs into former students who tell her, "I live in Rocky Hill," or "Mrs. Galvin, I stayed in Rocky Hill."
"It's a very special community. It has a quality of all its own and it always did," she said.
"I think there's a tradition. There's a good caring for one another. There's an old-time neighborly quality in Rocky Hill."
"Good memories. I wouldn't have done anything else with my life. It was the best," she said.
She said former students still approach her and ask, "'Miss Galvin how do you recognize me after 40 years? You don't change.' I say I mean I looked like that?"
Galvin was from an era, she readily admits, when "teacher" meant peer, mentor, and friend. Her contemporaries, including Mr. McVicar, in Rocky Hill and elsewhere, were of the same mold.
"I was so humbled by it," she said of receiving the McVicar Award. "I couldn't believe it and I remain humbled by it. I'm just shocked."
One quickly realizes that Jean Galvin's indomitable spirit has given her an unsinkable quality that she has passed on to generations of Rocky Hill students.
"I love it. I've had a wonderful life," she said.