McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
On May 1st as I watched my granddaughter Lindsey Wilson and the students of Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School present their May Day program, my mind wondered back to the days when McLean County schools had such programs.
Those programs celebrating the first day of May in the era of the Great Depression were colorful pageants, a cherished ritual of spring and warm weather after the long cold days of winter.
The programs began in the McLean County schools in 1929. They grew out of a program established by the County Health Department to promote good health among the students. It was called the Blue Ribbon program and combined Health Department examinations with rewards for good health or corrections of the problems. The basic requirements were having a smallpox vaccination, good teeth, healthy tonsils, eyes normal or fitted with glasses, good posture and weight normal or not more that seven percent underweight or 20 percent overweight.
During the year the County Health Department sent a doctor and a nurse to examine students and if a student fulfilled all the requirements he or she was deemed a Blue Ribbon child and was awarded a Blue Ribbon at the May Day celebration. A notice that was sent to my parents stated that the examining doctor was O. W. Scudder and the nurse was Felosia Daniel. I have no recollection of them, I do remember that I never received a Blue Ribbon. I so wanted to be a Blue Ribbon child but always had one to three pluses for my tonsils. One year I had a terrible case of tonsillitis and was told I should not be in school but was not sent home.
May Day Blue Ribbon programs were held at five of the schools, Beech Grove, Calhoun, Island, Livermore and Sacramento and a queen of May and attendants were chosen for each of the schools. The programs were different in each school but most had readings, musical presentations, talks by distinguished people, then the dancing of the May pole and awarding of the Blue ribbons.
The Island program that I remember most was held at the Island Ball Diamond, located on what is now the old Island-Livermore Road. Our queen was Wilda Penrod and her attendants were Agatha Shacklett and Virginia Jarvis with Margaret Penrod as flower girl. The May pole securely anchored in the ground had streamers of crepe paper in colors of pink, yellow, blue, lavender and green flowing from the top. Each participant held a streamer and danced around the pole, weaving the colorful paper ribbons into a plait against it.
Island’s queen Wilda Penrod Adcox, and I recently reminisced about our school days at Island and of the May Day programs. She remembered getting a new dress that her mother made and I had a new one made by a friend of my mothers.
The newspaper reported that there was “Good attendance at each of the programs” and “the efficient way in which they were given shows a splendid spirit of cooperation on the part of the teachers, parents, program committee and pupils.”
It was a good program for the health of the students and a beautiful way to welcome spring during the hard times of the Depression.