Jessie Clark was one of seven black students in her school.  Black?...the term was probably "Colored" or something worse depending on the student's perceived attitude or the classifier's temperament at the time.  Even at that, the school was progressive for its era...there was even a black athlete although there is no mention if he was allowed to accompany his teammates to all of the road contests.  I came of age in the same town almost fifty years later.  White still battled black, emotionally if not always physically.  Black people were so highly regarded and evenly treated, locals still unofficially "reserved" three areas where they could live free of white "encroachment."  The story is told that some residents of the town once later protested to keep a family of Polynesian background from moving into a white subdivision. A black friend of mine grew up in a similar town and school at around the same time except that he lived about 200 miles away.  My friend was allowed to buy a hamburger from the only town eating establishment except that he enjoyed the singular pleasure of being "allowed" to go around back and make his purchase through a window.  He once mentioned that there were few black girls in his school and a much younger white woman joked, "So you dated white girls!"  It was said with a sincerity, purity and sister's care by a person without prejudice or the knowledge of the fights which my friend would have had to endure had he even asked a white girl for a date.

Jessie's generation broke ground for others.  In many parts of the country, she would have been denied the right to vote long after her white classmates enjoyed it. She was quiet and unassuming.  In many American stores she wouldn't have been allowed to try on shoes or clothes. Despite all of what she endured. She was described as amiable.  Behind her sad eyes resided the desire to become a nurse.  I hope she made it.

Esther Hill loved to study and someday hoped to be president of a large university.  She was described as having  a quiet disposition and a love for learning.   Her ambitions were a little optimistic given that women were not even allowed to vote in 1917.  It would be three more years before the US Congress would vote to ratify the 19th Amendment.  Even at that more than thirty percent of congressmen voted against women's suffrage.  The battle for approval was even more spirited in some of the states before the Amendment became official.  Twice elected class vice president, this class intellectual wrote:

The sun is rising above the hill,
A robin is singing loud and shrill.
The Senior Class of seventeen
Looks into life with faces serene.
The four years together have been short and sweet,
And now we will part hoping to meet
Many times on our various ways
And talk of our bygone high school days.
Many are the days we have spent together,
working and shirking in all kinds of weather.
Some to be forgotten as soon as past,
Others to be remembered while life should last.
We will never forget the parties and spreads,
Nor the Senior girls with their curly heads,
Nor the teachers who've helped us so faithfully thru
And have taught us the things we ought to do.
And since our High School days are past,
Let us hold the knowledge we gained there-fast.
And let us work with the utmost zeal
And show the world that life is real.
Be not weary when your task is large,
Remember brave soldiers are the ones who charge;
So let us strive to attain success
And honor our Class and M.H.S.

Velma Heiserman sits between two classmates in 1917.  She was sixteen years old.  Some forty-two years later she would be my English teacher.  She never married.  In her younger days a female teacher was announcing her retirement when she announced her wedding intentions.  It would be "Miss Heiserman" until the day she died in 1982 at the age of eighty-one.  She lived in a rooming house across the street from the old brick school building.  She wasn't popular with narrow minded students.  I am being kind.  I wanted to say "stupid students." She attended a "normal" school to be trained as a teacher.  She had your mother's smile when you allowed her to use it.  She also unlocked the mystery of why literature was such a treasure.  I can still remember some of the short stories we read and discussed.  The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell and everything by Hemingway...I was already reading some of these things but I would soon see them in a different light.  Poetry...Coleridge and Shelley...the sarcasm and satire of Swift and Steele...and so much more remain pleasant memories.  She was of a different era—a different attitude. I think I can hear her telling me to rewrite this without the ellipses.   I owe her.  The students of the Class of 1963 dedicated their yearbook to her.  It was long overdue.

The quote above her photo is from Shelley.  I didn't forget.  It was Freshman English in 1960 when I first heard of Shelley and other writers. Years later, their lives, prose and poetry would still touch me for even deeper and more painful reasons. 

Miss Louise Layne Goodwin was not a good professional role model for Velma Heiserman.  Like her young protégé though, she would have a yearbook dedicated to her.  Louise Goodwin chose to leave her teaching position in 1917 to become Mrs. W.E. Biddlecome.  She moved west leaving behind students who genuinely cared about her.  There were many jobs which were not open to women in what so many bragged was a "great experiment in democracy."   Even within our lifetime, female applicants could be grilled about marital plans and reproductive issues.  As late as the 60's, some schools required pregnant teachers to retire or at least take leave lest the sight of an expectant mother elicit some sort of evil thought.