At a ceremony in the Salt Lake City School District building, district leaders and members of the Curtis family unveiled a plaque honoring Genevieve Raine Curtis, who is recognized in remarks as the first woman to serve on the Salt Lake City Board of Education.

The gathering brought current and former board members, district officials and relatives to recount Curtis’s civic work and community programs, and to place her portrait in the district’s new building. Dr. Elizabeth Grant, superintendent of the Salt Lake City School District, called the family’s attendance “a privilege” and said the district is “moving us even further forward.”

Natalie McCullough, a member of the Curtis family, read a biographical account of Genevieve Curtis’s life and public service that emphasized her work organizing parent-teacher associations, launching school hot-lunch programs during the Great Depression, and creating other volunteer-driven supports for children. McCullough said Curtis was born in 1879 and that, after studying for a kindergarten certificate in her late teens, Curtis opened a school in her mother’s home and later became a PTA and civic leader in the Salt Lake Valley.

Former Salt Lake City Board member Christy Sweat, who helped lead the project to honor Curtis, told attendees she felt “the love that I feel in this room for Genevieve” as she introduced the family speakers.

Speakers credited Curtis with a string of practical programs that district and family members said improved access to schooling: organizing PTAs across the valley; a hot-lunch program for children during the Depression; a program to provide eyeglasses for students for 25 cents a week; arranging shoes for about 600 barefoot children; instituting teacher appreciation day; and creating a “home teacher” program to serve chronically ill or homebound children. Several speakers also noted her leadership on what they described as early special-education work and her long service on the school board, including multiple years as board president.

U.S. Sen. John Curtis, who attended as a member of the Curtis family and was introduced by relatives, spoke about the family legacy and public service, telling the audience, “We never rise higher than when we learn to lift those that cannot lift themselves.”

Organizers moved from the program room to the district foyer for the plaque unveiling. Family members presented a framed family memento and a short family history reading to accompany the plaque dedication. District officials said the portrait and plaque are meant to honor both Curtis’s public-policy contributions and the private sacrifices that family members said informed her civic work.

No board action or vote was reported during the event; the program consisted of tributes, family remarks and the unveiling.

The plaque unveiling followed remarks that recounted specific projects and community programs associated with Curtis’s decades-long civic involvement, and attendees included current and former Salt Lake City School Board members as well as local elected officials, the superintendent said.