My School Days:
From Roxalana to Dunbar High

.....I was rudely plucked up from the security of home and dropped in a horrible alien territory. That was a traumatic forgettable unforgettable day. My life was changed forever. I had to be someplace i didn't want to be, and I hated it. I was totally unprepared.
.....In those days, there waan't any kindergarden. It was not really the school work or the books. My mother had always read to me. I liked books. However, I was absolutly not ready to just sit in one place all day long. It was just not my nature. My motor didn't have a neutral position, and it was asking for trouble to sit me down in one place very long. And, to make matters worse, I didn't like my teacher one little bit. She was way to old. She was still teaching beyond her years and she was cranky. I don't think she like boys, and she wasn't one bit partial to me. Of course she liked the girls. It became so bad that I often had a headache toward the end of the day and would sometimes have to go home.
.....During that first year I had scarlet fever and I nearly died. I couldn't even keep water down, and it was just touch and go. But I was spared by God and my first penicillin shot. I was sick a lot that year. I was sick so much, I was held back in the first grade. So, when everyone else was being promoted on that last day, I was the butt of ridicule because I was thought of, by the other children, as being too dumb to pass. That year, and the next one in the first grade, I was a square peg in a round hole. It was just a meserable start to my schooldays.

.....That first year, my sister imelda was in the 6th grade We walked to school together. The second year, my mother talked Sharon Wolfe into walking with me. That was ok, buecause I had a crush on Sharon. She was Imelda's, who we called Midge, best friend. We once had a mock wedding at which Sharon and I got married. I don't think Sharon was too overjoyed about walking me to school. Sharon, Midge and I are looking for you. If you are out there and see this, give me a shout!
.....If you walked around by the road, it was just three tenths of a mile from our house to school, but it sure seemed much further than that. There were several shorcuts which you could take. One was down through Deb Wilson's field. Another was down the hollow in front of our house. You oould also go down through Hissoms. All of these shortcuts brought you out on the road across from Myna and Woody Wolf's. There was another route you could take. You had to walk on out the road and go down the steep hill. This route brought you out at the bridge where Roberts Road joined Roxalana Road. This was the route that Sharon and I usually took, but I didn't like it much. The following year, the Vanetter boys and I would also go this way.

.....I had to walk to school. There was no other way. Dad had left for work long before it was time for me to go to school. But, sometimes, in later years, I could catch a ride with Bob Barrett who lived around the hill from us. In the early years, the road was gravel. On cold mornings, you just got very cold. On rainey days, you had to fight a heavy old raincoat which I hated. When it snowed, you waded the snow. We didn't have snow days in school back then. I remember just one time, when we had a blizzard in November, that school was let out for about a week. But, in the spring, the walk could be pleasant. The sun was warm and there would be grasshoppers flying here and there. I remember them landing in the road in front of me and of my trying to sneak up on them and step on them. I don't think I ever had any luck at that though.. In my later years at Roxalana, I would walk home for lunch and get back to school in plenty of time. There were times, when I was walking, that I would ask myself, "Why are you here in the first place?" That seems to be a strange question from a grade school kid, but, I used to ask myself that.
......My father worked at Fletcher Enamel. He would get off work at three o'clock. Sometimes, I could get a ride home with him. But, most of the time I would get home before he did. He would come home and lie down and rest for about a half an hour. Then my mother would let us know that supper was ready. In warmer weather; after supper, he would usulally go outside and work until darknes fell.

.....When I entered the 2nd grade, a miracle occured! Instead of having to face another year with the old teacher, I was blessed to have Mrs. Flack. Things changed. Oh, I still wasn't the perfect student. One day, while we had a substitute teacher, my cousin Carol Stone and I made an awful mess of the modeling clay. When she returned, Mrs. Flack was very angry with us. When we were by ourselves, Carol and I were pretty good, but, when we got together we could be holy terrors. But, Carol is now gone to an early grave, and I still really miss her.
.....As I said, things chnaged. School became better. It was much more enjoyable for me since I didn't have to face the old Miss Crank every day. Sometimes there were fun times. The school had an old movie projector. We also had a copy of the first Donald Duck cartoon. The principle, Mr.Weise, opereated the projector. The film was old, and we seldom got through the showing without the film breaking. But, we all, including Mr. Weise, always cracked up when Donald got yanked off stage by the cane around his neck.

.....The third grade was even better. I had Miss Sheheen for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. She was a sweet Syrian lady who had been an airline hostess. It was while in the 3rd grade that my love for reading exploded. I was still very sickly and, during one of those sicknesses, Dr. Bill Rice made a house call. I had comic books scattered all over the bed. On the hill, we all traded comic books. When he saw the books, Dr. Rice exclaimed, "Why don't you read something worth while!" I liked and respected him so much, that I started reading regular books. I read every library book in the classroom that year. I would hide them inside my textbooks and read a library book instead of my textbook. We all had to make book reports back then. I never was very good at getting a lot of them made, but I always got credit for more than I did because I read so much. I still remember some of those stories. Dr. Rice lived long enough to deliver both of our children.

.....In the sixth grade, I had Mr. Wiese. That was a good year. One of the things that I remember was when we went up and down the aisles saying the mutiplication tables. That practice drilled into my head most simple math. Now, I usally do not need a calculator for doing simple math like so many folks do today. Once a week, that year, there was a program on the radio about West Virginia. There were stories about Johnny Appleseed and Chuck Yeager. I learned a lot from that program. Perhaps that is why I am such a history nut. Remember, this was before television...and for that, I am grateful.

.....I don't remember when I didn't like the girls. When I was in grade school, I didn't do too bad. That is up until the sixth grade which was a disaster. In the first several grades, there were Mary Francis Ross, Joan Trent, and Mary Helmick. But, in the sixth grade I got a crush on Mary Francis Lilly. She didn't like me at all..as far a a girl would like a boy. That was hard. I had started to grow too fast and was not very pretty to look at. I was worse than gangly. When I got into junior high, it just got worse. And, I suffered because of it. But, all in all, the sixth grade was a good one. I liked and respected my teacher. A good teacher can make all of the difference.

.....I am looking for a photo of the old Roxalana School if someone has one and would like to share. The old Roxalana School was a four room school. It faced down the Roxalana Hollow and was just across the road from the bridge to Roberts Road. On the front it had a small porch. From the porch you entered a t-shaped hall. The fifth and sixth grade room was to the left as you entered and the fouth and fifth was across the hall, At the end of the hall, to the left at the top of the T was the first and 2nd grade. To the right at the top of the T was the 2nd and 3rd grade room. At the end of the top of the T to the left was the girls rest room. To the right was the boy's rest room. There was no cafateria. You either had to bag it or go home for lunch. There were no cloak rooms or lockers. In the winter, all of the boots and coats were hung or piled in the corner of the room. Lunches were stored on a shelf. We did get a pint of milk a day. Of course, every room had a large chalk board. The desks were the single old-fashoned kind with the inkwells.

.....If there was to be a paddling, it was usually done my Mr. Weise. I had one paddling, but it was administered by Miss Sheheen. I was a canidate for more than one, but I was able to talk my out of those. Johnny Caldwell and I were playing in an open window while Miss Sheheen was out of the room. She came back and caught us. She told us to stand outside in the hall and wait. Wile we were standing in the hall, Johnny said, "Ain't no body going to give me a whippin!" and he bolted out through the outside door and went home. He lived next door to the school. When the teacher came out and saw that Johnny was gone, she said, "Just because you didn't run, don't think you're not going to get a paddling!" With that she turned me around and gave me a couple of good whacks. She was very angry. But, Johnny received a far worse paddling hwen he got home than I got from the teacher.

.....The school had a fairly large playground in front with a slide and some swings. Onthe side next to the hill, there was a narrow yard where we would sometimes play dodgeball. On the highway side of the school, there was also a small narrow yard. We would play touch football with an old ragstuffed football on this yard. When I went home for lunch, I would hurry back so that I could play football.

.....I had to cross the bridge across the creek to get to school. But, someone had place a board across the creek from one of the houses. I got intothe habit of going down a path and crossing the board. I did that once too often. One morning my foot slipped and I fell in the creek. Ihad to go all the way back home and change my clothes. My mother was less than pleased.

.....We always had a fall festival. Sometimes it was called a Halloween Festival and I think once it was called a Harvest Festival. Once, when I was in the lower grades, they used the hall to the boy's bathroom as a haunted house. I was walking through the haunted house when someone opened the broom closet. A skeleton popped out. It liked to have scared the living daylights out of me. I think that, from that time on, I expected to see a skeleton everytime I went to the bathroom at school. Once they had a cake walk. I sister Betty and I won it and we were so proud. But, the next day the kids at school said that Lois Graley should have won it. They said that the woman who was runni9ng the cakewalk cheated. Perhaps she did. She was a friend of ours. But, that wasn't our fault.

.....Finally the days of grade school cmae to an end. Now I would have to go to Dunbar for the 7th grade. For some reason, I don't remember riding the schoolbus that first year at Dunbar. I think you had to live at least two miles from school to be allowed to ride the schoolbus.
.....The building was large and old. It was once Union District High School. It was a three-story dark old fashoned building. There was a gym on the 2nd floor. And it had a cafateria so you didn't have to bag it. The halls were dark and gloomy. It was hard for a new student to find their way around. In my first year there, all the grades from 7t through 12th attended. It would have been better for me if that had not been the case.
.....The seniors were reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." One day, as I was walking down the hall, one of the senior smark-alic boys yelled while pointing at me, "Hey, there's Ichabod Crane!" The nickname stuck, and it was the bane of my life all the way through school. It doomed any romantic relationships I might have had. What girl in her right mind would dare to be the girl friend of Icahabod Crane? Do you know what that name means. It means, "The Glory of the Lord has Departed." It was a curse although I tried to be easy going and to make the best of it. But, what I would like to say is, "A pox on that boy!"

.....There were two eating places near the school that catered to the luch-time crowd. I went to the Bulldog Cafe which was across the street from the school. The folks who ran it knew my parents. You could get two big hotdogs with chillie and slaw along with a pepsi or big RC for thirty-five cents. Those are still the best hotdogs that I have eaten.

.....The cafeteria was on the first floor, above that on the 2nd was the library. On the 3rd floor above those two was the music room. The gym took up the 2nd and third floors. Around the edges were the class rooms. There was also a wooden annex for shop. The boys had shop in the 7th grade. I hated it. The shop teacher, Mr. Leone, later became Mayor of Dunbar.
.....Another thing that I hated was gym. Every boy, unless he was playing some sport, had to have gym every day. This lasted every year until the 12th grade when you were spared. You had to shower. There is nothing like having to go into an old dirty shower room and showering with a bunch of other boys. That was especially true for me who had no brothers at home. I don't remember much about that. i think that I have blocked it out of my memory. One thing i do remember. When I was in the tenth grade, big ol Buddy Barnhart turned a bench over across my bare feet. I think i still have a broken bone from that.

.....Another feature of school was intramural sports. I don't know whose brilliant idea that was. But, although I had never played them, I liked sports and glady stuck up my hand when the called for those who wanted to play basketball. So, although I had never played in my life, I ventured out to play. But, I didn't know that one team was shirts and the other was skins. I guess it must have been my great luck, but the ref pointed at us and said, "Skins!" I pulled off my t-shirt and I heard a gasp from the girls in the crowd. And I heard what sounded like a senior girl's voice say, "Look how skinney he is!" I looked down, and indeed I was. I was nothing but skin and bones. I had always been that way, and I still am that way. I will die that way. I was in the 8th grade befor I hit 100 pounds. I was 6 foot three when I was 15 years old and was the poster child for that joke, "Turn sideways, stick out your tounge, and make like a zipper." When I joied the Army, I weighed all of 129 pounds with a 28 inch waist. No diets for me! Needless to say, I didn't play a very good game, but I scored a basket. Some of the girls came around me in homeroom and wanted to know why I thought that I could play basketball. Phyllis Lamb stood up for me and said something like, "Leave him alone. At least he made a basket." Ah...Phyliss, where are you?

.....My Eighth Grade was an odd year. Because of overcrowding, the school day was split. The 10th, 11th, and 12th grades went in the morning. The 7th, 8th, and ninth went in the afternoon. My frend Clifford Knighton lived down toward the mouth of Roxalana Hollow. I kept my bicycle at his house. I would walk over and down the hill behind our house, and, thenwe would ride together to school. Clifford's friend Tommy would also ride with us. That worked well until it became winter. Then I had to brimg my bike back home.
.....After we started walking to schoo, we got in a bad habit of playing in the creek on the way to school. We would float bottles down the creek. Some of the kids laughed at us, be we didn't care.
.....One day, before we gave up riding ur bikes, we were let out of school for the afternoon to watch a football game. Now, the football field was about a mile or so down Dunbar Avenue from the school. So it was quite a ride. We rode down Charles Avenue and hid our bikes and books in the weeds across the railroad tracks from the field. After the game, we retrieved our bikes and rhode home. We had just almost reached Clifford's home when I realized that I had left my books in the weeds. I had to turn around and ride all the way back and get my books.

.....Well, in the eight grade, the girl problems started again. Mary Cathern Lilly was now in the seventh grade, and my crush on her got a jump start. That lasted awhile until, one day, it ended abruptly. And, I was able to move on. I cannot remember if it was in the eigth or ninth grade that I had a crush on Sue Hill. Sue was a nice pretty blonde girl with a good sence of humor. But, try as I might, it never got beyond a crush on my part.

.....In the eighth grade, I tried out for basketball. I was tall and I should have been ok. But, I was so skinney and light, I was mostly out of control. I tried again in the ninth with the same success. I never really got fairly decent until I was out of school and in the Army. But, then it was too late. I could shoot well, but I could not play with the team.

.....The library became my faforite place and I continued my reading. My reading would becaome the key to what ever success I was to have. it was also during these years that I would buy books at Buffalo, West Virginia at Cunninghams Hardware for a dime a book. I read constantly almost to a point that I almost ruined my eyes.

.....We had a graduation form Junior High.

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..........This is the Dunbar High School building when it was just a few years old.

.....The new Dunbar High School building was constructed way down on the western end of Dunbar Avenue. It was adjacent to Lion's Field. It was a yellow brick building with a gym. The gym was connected by a covered hallway. Even though it was new, it was still over crowded and they had to add those old wooden annexes.
.....The tenth grade was not a bad year. It was marred by the death of Mrs. Bright. According to most folks, Mrs. Bright was one of the best teachers ever. I only had her for a short while that fall. She would stand ramrod straight as we marched into the room. But, one day she was gone and we heard that she was very ill. We were shocked when she died of cancer. In those days, they did very little for cancer except to write you off. Now, even with all of the new treatments, cancer still steals our loved ones and friends. I hate it!

.....Nothing really spectacular happened that year except that Dunbar won the State Track Championship for the first time. That sent Coach Stan Romanoski to WVU as the new track coach there. I finally gave up comnpletley on girls in the tenth grade. That is, until I went into the Army.

.....The 11th Grade was kind of an interesting year. That was in 1958 and Dunbar High School intergrated in 1958. I do not remember that we had any trouble at the high school.
.....It was a little iffy at first. The white kids congregated in the gym, while the black kids gathered in the library. This went on for awhile. While this was going on a skinney tall red-headed boy decided he would go over to the library to see what was going on. After, the library was his normal hangout anyway. He had to be around the books. He wasn't going to let current affairs keep him away from his books. Although the black kids were friendly and treated him well, they still laughed at him. Back at the gym, the kids laughed at him for going over to the library. But, I didn't really care since I was already used to being laughed at as being Ichabod or icky or what ever combination came to a kid's mind. But, we never had any trouble and maybe I sort of broke the ice...who knows. And, we won the State Track Championship again.

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.....This is my old battered copy of the 1959 Bulldog.

.....Then, all of a sudden, it was my senior year. It was a great year. I was still Ichabod but there was a shell over that. Praise the Lord! there was no more gym! No more sweaty socks and sweaty athletic supporters. My grades were pretty good. And, for once I had a year in which I was not sick. Still no girls, but that was old hat.

......There were senior privileges. We got to leave first after assembly. At the end of the year, we had short days in school. There didn't seem to be any pressure for me. At home it was different. Dad, and everyone else at Fletcher Enamel, was put out on the street without a dime. At the age of almost 60, Dad was without a job for more than thirty years.. It was hard.

.....During the 2nd semester, I sang with the Boy's Chorus. Miss Eldridge assigned me as a 2nd bass. I don't think she wanted to hear me. She was a pretty slender woman that the boys liked to pick on. We sang at the baccalaureate service and for the graduation exercizes. At the baccalaureate, when I marched up on stage, I was dead last, I found that I didn't have a chair. Some smart alec had tried to do me in. But, I saw the mising chair over in the corner be hind a potted plant. I marched right accross the stage in front of everyone and retrieved my chair. At the next meeting of the seniors, Mr. Speicher commended me for my presence of mind.

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...............This is our principal George Speicher.

.....George Speicher was a good man. I didn't order my graduation announcements because dad was out of work. I didn't feel that it would be right for me to order them and that they were not that important. But, I got call to go to the office. When I got there, Mr. Speicher wanted to know why I had ordered my announcements. I told him why. He said, "You have to have your announcements." He told me to come to his house the following Saturday. I washed all the windows in his house. He paid me enough to order my announcements.. Like I said, "He was a good man."

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......................These are the ladies that worked in the office.

.....In June of this year, 2009, it will have been fifty years since we marched up and received our deplomas. Some of us, too many of us, are gone. Some of us have probably have had brushes with the grim reaper. Some of us prabably have great grandchildren. There were 186 of us. I have seen but a handfull of the Class of 1959 since that day. If you are out there and read this, "May God Bless You!"