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| Fifth Graders at Kerrville Elementary, History Pageant, March 2, 1937 |
This week, a kind reader brought me a handmade book, which was created right here in Kerrville, back in 1937. If an old book can be sweet, this one certainly is.
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| The book |
It’s a hardcover book measuring a little over 8.5 inches wide, and 11.5 inches tall. It is bound to the covers with string and pasted end sheets. There are about 150 pages in the book, yellowed with time, but still marked with the brilliant colors of crayons and map pencils. The cover is made using binder board and blue book cloth. The students did a fine job binding the book.
It was created by the
students of Mabel Deering’s “high” fifth grade Texas history class, and has
pages of hand-drawn maps, hand-drawn scenes from Texas history, poetry written
by the students, postcards and other printed materials pasted on the pages, and
in the back, in a kraft envelope pasted to the back cover of the book, a series
of photographs showing a history pageant performed by the class on March 2,
1937, in the school’s auditorium. These photographs were taken by a local
photographer, Cleveland Wheelus.
Each page was signed by the student who created it.
Miss Deering taught at Kerrville
Elementary. That elementary school campus was later called Tivy Elementary
School, back in the 1960s when I was an elementary school student at Starkey
Elementary, and then Tivy Upper Elementary School in the 1990s, when my
children were students on the same campus.
The campus was at the
intersection of Tivy and Barnett Streets. In 1937, the campuses of Kerrville
Elementary, Franklin Junior High School, and Tivy High School were all on Tivy
Street, on either side of Barnett.
I recognize the names of
many of the students, and perhaps you will, too: Louis Burton, Trilby Mosty,
Mary Busby, Dorothy Lou Stiffler, Joyce Short, Ida Soto, Maltida Bonn, Edgar
Russell, Eldon Raymond Riley, Edgar Russel, Elaine Oehler, Joe Henry Mills,
Allen Steves, Trilby Corbin, Aaron Robertson, Richard Flenniken, Dennis Parker,
Nina Burnett, Anna Bell Reynolds, Ethel Lee Ellis, Geraldine McDonald, Dorothy
Jen Randle, Louise Nichaus, and many others.
There are several things about the book which stand out for me:
The penmanship is very
good. These fifth graders had good handwriting skills.
Many of the pages look
like homework assignments. Perhaps Miss Deering chose from among the homework
she received back from students, choosing the best work to be included in the
class book. I think this would have motivated me as a fifth grader to do my
best work!
The pages are also very
neat, often marked with a layout guide in red pencil, so the pages would be
uniform when bound together.
Mabel Deering taught
elementary school in Kerrville for 31 years, and for 26 of those years she
taught fifth grade. In 1937, she lived with her widowed mother, Mary Deering,
at 1120 Third Street, which was within walking distance to the elementary
school. When she began her teaching career, all that was required was a
teaching certificate, often obtained at a Summer Normal school almost
immediately after graduation from high school. Because she was ill with the
measles when it came to graduate from Tivy High School, she never got her high
school diploma. She later applied for a teaching certificate, which she
received – even without her diploma.
Her first teaching job was
at the Turtle Creek School. It's likely Clarabelle Barton Snodgrass was one of her students.
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| Kerrville Elementary 5th Grade students, 1937 |
Mabel Deering, “through determination and courage,” managed to obtain her college degree 15 years into her teaching career, by attending Schreiner Institute, and then Southwest Texas in San Marcos, during the summers. She received her bachelor’s degree in 1937, the same year as the creation of this book. Deering was one of the first women to attend Schreiner Institute “when the institute voted to accept female students during the summer sessions.
She and her parents came
to Kerrville from Georgia, when she was in the fifth grade – a grade she would
teach here for 26 years.
She retired from teaching
in 1958, and died in 1966, when she was 72. She is buried at Glen Rest
Cemetery, along with her parents.
I’m thankful to the kind
reader who brought this book to me.
Until next week, all the
best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who enjoys collecting items from Kerr County’s history. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times January 21, 2023.
I only recognize a couple of names and one of them became my sister-in-law -
ReplyDeleteTrilby Corbin; she married my brother Bill Talbert.
Miss Mabel Deering taught my grandmother, Daphne Williams at Turtle Creek School. She also taught me in fifth grade at Tivy Elementary in 1956-57. Not many teachers teach grandchildren of one of their first students.
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