“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Forget the king’s horses and the king’s men
Because Leslie Ethington was there
To make sure Humpty Dumpty will be open tomorrow.”

That’s not exactly the way the nursery rhyme went, but that’s the way it was for Columbia’s Humpty Dumpty school for 23 years.

Leslie Ethington’s longtime service as director of Humpty Dumpty and its only teacher from 1971-94, along with a long list of other volunteer activities for children, won her the Golden-K Kiwanis Club’s Senior Volunteer Service Award for 2007.

Her comment on receiving the award: “I’m a bit embarrassed; I consider myself just an average woman who enjoys being a volunteer.”

Embarrassed, maybe; average, hardly!

Leslie can blame her recent moment in the spotlight on conodonts.

Conodonts? They are minute fossils from the Paleozoic Era of the geologic past.

Here’s how conodonts led the Golden-K Kiwanis award.

Leslie Nielsen was raised in a Mormon family in Richfield, Utah, where she graduated in 1951 from Richfield High School with 90 percent of the kids who started with her in kindergarten. Next she went to Brigham Young University, where she spent three years working on a degree in kindergarten education.

Ray Ethington was a graduate student at Iowa State University in geology and paleontology. He took a summer job with a geophysical firm drilling for oil near Richfield. He met Leslie by chance at the Rainbow Café.

Maurice Mehl was a professor a geology at the University of Missouri-Columbia in the 1950s and one of the world’s leading authorities on conodonts. Mehl, for years, taught a course titled “Life of the Geologic Past,” which had no textbook. He lectured, the students took notes, then wrote their own textbook, which became the final grade for the course. Conodonts were part of the lecture. Ol’ Clark knows; he was there.

Ray and Leslie were married in 1955 and lived in Iowa City, where Ray received his doctorate in paleontology. They then moved to Arizona State, where Leslie came within four hours of achieving her bachelor’s degree.

Now the conodonts.

Mehl, one of MU’s true characters, retired in 1960, and his collection needed a curator, a micropaleontologist. You guessed it — Ray Ethington!

The Ethingtons landed in Columbia in 1962. When their two daughters were in school, Leslie returned to the classroom and in 1970 finally finished her degree in early childhood education.

Her first teaching job was at Strawn School when it was part of the county school system. She taught kindergarten in the morning and music in the afternoon. Tribune columnist Joyce Hulett was the teacher for the first and second grades.

Even though her most memorable moment at Strawn was an encounter with a 7-foot blacksnake in the restroom, she recalled, “Strawn was a fun place to teach.”

When Strawn was absorbed by Columbia Public Schools, Leslie moved on to Humpty Dumpty. She stayed 23 years because she loved the concept. “It allowed me to be creative, to do my thing.”

In addition, Leslie has been a grandparent helper at Columbia’s two other preschools — Carousel and Southwest Play School.

The Ethingtons’ two daughters have given them four grandsons. Daughter Elaine Bluml lives in Lee’s Summit with husband Alex, the former manager of Columbia’s J.C. Penney store. Mary Pratt is the manager or Maurice’s of Columbia and the mother of the four grandkids.

During her years at Humpty Dumpty, Leslie spent her summers with her husband, who did research in Wyoming. Her volunteer career came after she and Ray backed away from the daily grind. Her schedule:

PShe reads on Tuesday mornings at Hand-in-Hand Child Care Center as a part of the Golden-K’s GRAY reading program. In 2004, she was the club’s grand champion reader. “What better place to get lots of slobbery kisses,” she said.

POn Wednesday afternoons, she works in the Mormon History Center and on Sunday morning teaches a Sunday school class for 7- to 8-year-olds. She has taught at every level from age 4 to 16. “I’ve taught Sunday school since I was a rebellious 13-year-old,” she said.

PShe weaves baby caps for the newborns at Boone Hospital Center. She has done 100 since Christmas.

PShe is involved with several projects with the Mormon humanitarian services.

During Leslie’s final two years in high school, she edited the school newspaper and was the local correspondent for the Salt Lake City Deseret News, earning 25 cents a column inch. She has returned to her teenage years.

Teaching kids has been her life’s work; now she’s writing children’s books. Two of her efforts have been published, and others are piled on her desk. “Writing has become a great joy,” she beamed.

The Kiwanis award came with a $750 check for the charity of Leslie’s choice. She chose Childcare Connection, a referral service for parents looking for day care that had existed on grants no longer available.

Mary Ann Pabst is moving her connections program to the Internet, and the Kiwanis check will help it happen. Thanks to conodonts.