The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 6

April 25, 1976 chool merson remim Pantagraph A-6 Bloomington-Normal, III. taught fourth that has been playing at Emerson School since the place was opened about 67 years ago. And with June approaching, the final era's end is at hand. The building that housed Emerson School will join the ranks of the no-longer-affordable, such as Edwards and Franklin schools. It will be sold to the highest bidder, and its children will become a part of the Oakland School student body.

But some of them, too, may remember a time or two. By James Keeran The people who made it what it was are gone now. There was Mrs. Lawson when I was there in kindergarten. She got us going in Emerson School and made us all feel pretty good about ourselves by once leaving a class project up for the afternoon kids to see.

Miss Kngelhardt is gone too, and so is Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller died at an early age, but she was a beauty when she taught my second grade at Emerson School. She was my favorite.

Next I had Miss Conrad, who became Mrs. Rowland; then Miss Stewart (another all-time favorite), Mrs. Gedvil and finally Miss Summers. Miss Stubblefield was principal there when my class started kindergarten in the autumn of 1945, and we were mostly afraid of her. She had a stern look, and nobody uttered a sound when she happened into our room.

But she retired and Mr. Curry, then Mr. Thompson replaced her. We felt the same, pretty much, about him. He scared us and he was a hard man to deal with when you'd had a fight on the playground or had been caught swinging from the overhead pipes in the boys' restroom.

Recess success Oh, and later on Mr. Koukl came to teach us instrumental music. I suppose he was there all along, but I never knew him until I was old enough to hold a boys or girls the flags." A kid could count on having that corner only about once a year, but it was a class job. The flags were nothing more than fishing poles with two red banners attached to them. They were held across the street, from both sides at the same time, to warn oncoming traffic that children were crossing.

It was a new idea, and that intersection was the only one so protected in the city and we knew it. That sort of thing went out of fashion with the advent of adult crossing guards, and another era of patroling was brought to an end. Unending mystery An era that probably never was brought to an end which probably existed from the time that the school's third floor was closed (before the 1940s) was the absolute mystery of the third floor. Everybody knew there was a perfectly-good basketball court and a perfectly good swimming pool up there, but it wasn't until we were in sixth grade that the principal dashed those beliefs by-taking us on a guided tour of the condemned third floor. It was just another dirty old place that appeared at least twice as big as it really was, and we all lamented the fact that the school board couldn't come up with enough money to fix it up so we could have our recess up there on rainy days.

Of course, closing that third floor was just another in the end-of-an-era series "-jig 9 y. wt twitr k. www www np A- TT i v--wk' warn1 it i. -rjjs I IW If f'i Leftovers of French horn without dropping it. And there was Mrs.

Parker. She taught us art every other week or so. And Mrs. Thompson, the principal's wife, was our traveling physical-education teacher. "Recess," we called it, not really knowing what the word meant.

Finally there was Mr. Weise, the janitor and surrogate father to us all. Most of us had the idea that he really ran the whole place and that the teachers and principal just did what he wanted them to do. They are all gone, now, from Emerson School; and, except for Mr. Koukl, from the educational system of Bloomington.

Next year their building will be gone, too an act of the board of education to save money. Of course it will be remembered by those who went to grade school there or who worked there. It will just cease to be a school a place where a boy or a girl, now a man or a woman, set down roots so deep they are not felt any more. But they are there and cannot be pried loose. How can you forget learning your first cuss word in fhe north lobby of that school? The memory of those statues on the main floor is embedded in my mind.

There they are, one at each end of the hall. I see them in silhouette. One was a Revolutionary War soldier, or so we thought, on horseback. It turned out to be Paul Revere. Giggling gawkers The other was an American Indian, mounted and in battle dress.

A piece of the man's headdress fell below the horse's belly in such a spot as to make us all giggle when we happened to look at it. Those statues are still there, but they are smaller. At least they seem smaller. They were donated by the 1920 and 1921 PTAs. We had heard of the PTA, but we had no idea what 1920 and 1921 was.

We also had heard of World War I and knew that it had something to do with a large, plaster base relief of Liberty leading her troops. It was on a wall in the school, and we saw it a lot, but we didn't fully understand it any better than the war that was then going on. I don't remember our teachers telling us much about war. We were protected in the school, which seemed as if it were almost an extension of our homes. Our dads performed in the annual PTA show to raise money for something, and our moms baked cookies and cakes, when they could get the sugar, and served coffee and punch for the open houses.

That was always a great treat, to be in the school after dark, when the lights were on and our parents would come to the classrooms and look at the things of ours that our teacher had plastered on the blackboards. Run and slide We would run and slide on the hall floors outside the room. Then we'd go inside and giggle as our teacher told our parents, in muffled tones, how we were doing in spelling or reading or arithmetic. It didn't become math until high school. There was another treat at Emerson School to grow up to be a fifth or sixth grader; for it was then that you could sign up for patrol duty.

And in 1948, Emerson had one of the best patrol duties in the Twin Cities. It was at the corner of Clinton Street and Oakland Avenue where the patrol It full nQ i TT fl iv 7 1 cfif, I If "h) 1 I 1 II tfrt li if ISIS fp 1 til I I (1 1 r--. 1 1 via IVti Xnr ill If is-J I -3 1 Education is still alive at Emerson Whither they scattered, their influence remained another time if of Henry Miller, who lives in Normal. She taught only two years at Emerson, and I was lucky enough to have her for one of them. She died in 1970.

Miss Virginia Conrad, who became Mrs. Rowland while teaching my third-grade class, quit the system in 1953 and lives in Minonk. Also in 1953, Mrs. Maxine Gedvil resigned and moved after four years in Emerson's fifth grade. She lives in Rockford, as does Howard Curry, who was principal at Emerson from 1947 to 1952.

Miss Lucile Stubblefield was principal for my first two years at Emerson and has since died. Miss Marie Summers, who retired in 1956 after 43 years in the school district, was my sixth-grade teacher during the same year that Frank Thompson began as principal. Both are retired, Miss Summers living in Bloomington and Thompson in Normal. His wife, Barbara, was our physical-education (recess) teacher. Our other special teachers were Miss Ruth Parker, art, who retired in 1968 and lives in Bloomington.

and Frank Koukl, who teaches music at Bloomington Junior High School. And above thern all was William WTeise, the custodian, who lived on Hannah Street and who retired. I could not find out what happened to him after that. 8 Main entrance way out 1 iI'anUKraph photus lirry Mevvrt 1 tn.r fe-' There are more people indigenous to Emerson School than were mentioned in the main story, of course. But these were my people, or I was their person.

Together they were my world at Emerson. And, for all of grade school, Emerson was my world. It was Mrs. Fern I.awson who taught my kindergarten class, and she continued on that job until 1954. She is retired and still lives in Bloomington.

Mrs. Elverta Engelhardt was my first-grade teacher, a job she held at Emerson from 1935 to 1951. She lives in Chenoa. Mrs. Florence Miller is the late wife i The of v' j.

A It rj 1 fU Sfafue of the past, silhouetted in vacant hall Namesake.