By Irma Dop Williams and Charlotte Shivvers
Thank you, Helen Boertje, for your inspiration about rural schools.
The best part had to be the coasting: A generous farmer allowed students and teacher to climb the nearby hill for incredible sledding from the top down across the flat almost to Hawk Run Creek. Toboggans were created by curling the end on a spare sheet of tin roofing. Then there were the coasting parties! Graduates, teachers, and parents sometimes joined the moonlit crowd as snow crunched beneath boots and sent sleds moving like lightning down the big hill.
Sunnyside was filled with wonders: The giant water cooler included a button that kids loved to push. Kerosene lamps hung from high brackets and gave warm light on dark winter days. The front porch and steps encouraged teacher and students to relax and visit until the bell rang. And then the library! It was behind two doors that swung open to show beautiful rows of books – books that awakened the imagination and allowed readers to travel to every part of the world. (Today’s students probably could not understand the joy those Sunnyside students felt when allowed to take one precious book home to read.)
There was supervision in that isolated education center; the county superintendent made regular visits with just enough fore-warning so that all could be unnaturally spic and span.
The biggest event of the year was the Christmas program. For weeks, the students practiced every song and recited every poem preparing for the big night. When it arrived, parents crowded themselves into the children’s seats and became audience. The black curtains were pulled for the program to begin, and the actors came forth! Afterwards there were various homemade goodies. It was time for visiting, laughter, and congratulations – with occasional snide comments from recent graduates, older brothers or sisters now in the enlightened world of high school. One remarked, “‘Jingle Bells’ sounded like you were in different sleighs.”
Ah, yes, Sunnyside did include forbidden desk carving, pigtail pulling, and the occasional need to stay in during recess, or even after school. But that’s a small part of the story.
Many lifelong friendships started at that little school. The authors met in primary (kindergarten) and continued together through school bus rides to Pleasantville High School. Sharing, competing, stimulating all the way – from trading sandwiches in the far corner of the Sunnyside yard to spending noon hours ice skating on Hawk Run – Charlotte and Irma took it all in. Best friends seventy years later – after children, college, and careers – they still share food, but ice skate much less. They know now they were very lucky; one negative at the little school could be isolation – if there was no one you liked in your age group, you could be quite alone.
The teachers, of course, were the center of it all. Their accomplishment included not simply teaching nine grades of elementary school, but all the housekeeping that was done; lighting the fire on cold mornings; providing emergency medical aid; and monitoring library, music, and art. Some even expanded on that to lead nature hikes, provide bird feeders, seine minnows on Hawk Run and teach pole vaulting over creek and fence. They all deserve at least one gold crown – some should have two or three. Recent ones were:
Elizabeth Ritchie 1940 – 1942; Grayce Richards 1942 – 1943; Maxine Ball 1943 – 1946; Frances Jordan 1946 – 1947; Beulah Hildman 1947 – 1949
Educators and statisticians still ponder the relative worth of the one-room country school. No life-time achievement measures are available, but Sunnyside graduates seem to stand up quite well in life’s later tests. Most can look back to rich learning and may long for one more game of Fox and Geese or one more chorus from the red song book – maybe even “Auld Lang Syne.”
