Sally Hamilton

Sally Hamilton was born April 14, 1937, as Sara M. McElligott, in Minneapolis, but her family soon
moved to California. She attended Miracosta College, and began nurses training at Orange County
General Hospital (now UC Irvine Medical Center). There she met and married Marshall Hamilton and
decided to join him in attending CSU Long Beach, where she became an elementary education major.
During that time, she gave birth to each of the couple’s two sons. Sally graduated from CSU Long Beach in 1961.

Sally’s first teaching assignment was at Georgetown, Texas, Elementary School from 1961 to 1964,
which helped support the family while her husband earned a Ph.D. in nearby Austin. The couple then
returned to California, and Sally taught in the Ravenswood District of East Palo Alto. When the family moved to Pullman, Washington, she taught in a private kindergarten, as the state did not yet have public kindergarten. When the family lived in Ontario, Canada, from 1972 until 1978, she was not eligible to
teach in public schools, but did teach adult craft classes. The family returned to Pinyon Crest, California in 1978, and Sally taught elementary school with the Coachella Valley Unified School District, until a
battle with breast cancer brought her life to an end in 1989. She had been a mentor teacher there and was the second teacher in California to receive a Golden Apple Award from the American Federation of Teachers.

In addition to being a teacher who was well loved by her students and their parents, Sally was
productive and creative in a number of areas. She was usually beautifully dressed and sewed many of the clothes that she wore, to help the family budget. Some of the clothes that she made for herself or her family were from cloth that she made spinning thread on her spinning wheel and weaving it on one of her several looms. Along with cooking American food, she also mastered many international dishes. Sally was also a potter and created several types of ceramics using her pottery wheel and kiln. She built some of the children’s furniture and helped Marshall with insulating, roofing and other parts of building their homes. She traveled, hand in hand with her husband, in 50 states and 24 countries. Dancing,
hiking, cross-country skiing, concerts, plays and reading fiction and non-fiction were other things that
she enjoyed. She was always a sweet and generous person. She would be happy to provide this
assistance for a CSULB teacher in training.

Marshall Hamilton was born 8/2/1937, in El Centro, Calif. His senior year was at Santa Ana High School and he attended Santa Ana Community College. During that time, he was working nights as an orderly for Orange County in the psychiatric ward of Orange County General Hospital (which is now U.C. Irvine Medical Center). During 1958 he met and married Sally, who was a nursing student at the same hospital. From 1957-1961 he attended California State University at Long Beach, and completed a B. A. and M. A. in psychology, while he continued working for Orange County

Marshall completed a Ph.D. in clinical psychology between 1961 and 1964 at the University of Texas in Austin. From there he did an internship in clinical psychology at University of California, San Francisco, and then taught psychology for a year at San Jose State University. When Sally and Marshall moved to Pullman, Washington, where Marshall was a professor of child development and psychology at Washington State University 1966-72. From 1972-78 he continued teaching and research as a psychology professor at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada.
In 1978 they left the Canadian winters behind and moved back to California, where he worked for Riverside County as a mental health service supervisor until 2003. In 2003 Marshall began working for Kern County Mental Health as a mental health service supervisor, as they were having a home built in Cambria, California. After retiring there, he saw an opportunity to be a contracted psychologist at Coalinga State Hospital and worked there from 2010-12. While he had previously supervised treatment of mostly children and adolescents, with some parents and other adults, the work at Coalinga State Hospital involved convicted male sexual offenders. After that he worked part time as a psychologist with the Community Counseling Center in San Luis Obispo County, treating youth and adults, until retirement in 2018. For several years Marshall has been a board member of the Behavioral Health Advisory Board for San Luis Obispo County.

Marshall writes, “The best instruction that I received was at CSULB. In 32 years as a mental health service supervisor, I hired very fine graduates from several CSU campuses often to be part of our treatment teams. I am very glad to be able to assist a teacher in training at CSU LB in memory of Sally Hamilton.”

The College of Education (CED) expresses gratitude to all scholarship donors who continue to enhance the quality of education students experience at CSULB.