Nell McGowan presided over the teachers and students in the original high school building that housed sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The building consisted of two levels with about half the second floor devoted to an auditorium filled with rows of desks and a raised stage. The room served as “home room” for the entire eighth grade. Behind the stage, separated by the principal’s office suite, were boys’ and girls’ “cloak rooms” furnished with rows of racks featuring heavy brass hooks where we hung jackets, rain gear and our winter coats and headscarves (some literally reeking of cigarette smoke after the noon break for lunch.)
It seemed to me that most of the building was occupied by stairs and hallways rather than classrooms. There was a wide central stairway with a landing opening to two narrower stairways going up to the second floor. The ground floor had a wide hallway equipped with more hooks and ending at a back entrance giving access to the high school building where we went periodically for gym classes, home economics and shop for the eighth grade girls and boys. Restrooms and a pair of gloomy basement classrooms were located under the side stairs.
In an effort to provide a taste of the fine arts to the curriculum, Miss McGowan sometimes treated us to simple art or craft projects during study-hall time in the auditorium. On other occasions we enjoyed pep meetings before basketball and football games, class plays and “talent shows” where individuals could perform skits, play musical instruments, recite poetry or read original compositions.
The building was over-crowded with as many as 35 students to a class (each grade divided into three sections.) Because of WWII, a teacher shortage prevailed for several years, even after the war had ended and several of our teachers had come out of retirement to fill the need. Others had delayed retirement and we benefited from their experience. Mrs. Cotter was my homeroom teacher for two years and she taught both English and math classes to my section of seventh and eighth grades. Her patience was remarkable and never ended until each student fully understood the lesson. She made a game of diagramming sentences and played Mental Math with us while waiting for the dismissal bell at the end of the day. Most of all, she stressed the importance of punctuation for clarity in writing and understanding the origins and meanings of the words we use. She was the reason I came to love words and to enjoy the challenges of expressing my thoughts in prose and poetry.
In one of those dim basement classrooms, a roly-poly young woman introduced us to Shakespeare via “The Merchant of Venice” which sent me to the public library in search of more. A recently-married June Boyd taught math and English in one of the rooms at the top of the stairs while her husband became our very own hero, surviving D-Day at Utah Beach. Many years later, after she asked me to edit her memoir, we learned of their hasty furlough wedding. Her story revealed her remarkable education growing up in southwestern Iowa, attending college in Indianola and becoming, at age 18, a certified teacher.
Across the hall, Mrs. Baines had come out of retirement to enlighten us in the history of Iowa. A patient but unimaginative teacher, her lessons were mostly reading assignments in the textbook followed by quizzes testing our memory of significant dates and the names of explorers. Little was mentioned about native Americans, Iowa’s various ethnic settlements that still exist today, or the history of our own town and county. History didn’t seem to have much to do with us, our lives or our ancestors. It seemed that Mrs. Baines was too old to remember that teenagers view the world as it relates to them personally. In contrast, Mrs. Boyd was young enough to remember and she looked upon us almost as younger brothers and sisters. She attended all our class reunions, assured us that we had been her favorite class, and were the reason she continued as teacher and counselor for that age group.