Back in '42

I don’t want to bore you with yet another of those “my grandkids don’t believe my stories,” but I was telling them what a good memory I had and how I even remembered my first day of school almost 70 years ago!

"My Mom escorted me into Elizabeth School and took me to my classroom where my teacher, Miss Chalk, was waiting……."

Then, the guffaws from my audience began, “Miss Chalk?

Granddaddy, are you sure her name wasn’t Miss Blackboard ?” asked Jason.

“Or Miss Red Pencil?” his brother Randy chimed in.

And off they went, laughing all the way.

Later I got to thinking. That does sound kinda strange. A teacher whose name was Miss Chalk?

So, I thought, maybe my memory isn’t as good as it once was.  Therefore,  I retired that particular story from my repertoire and frankly hadn’t thought about it for a couple of years.

Then, just this week, a package arrived in the mail from an old friend of mine from the Piedmont Junior High days, Dick Ratcliffe. who had found something on eBay that he thought I might be able to use for a story on the website.

It’s a small booklet titled, THE EDUCATIONAL DIRECTORY OF THE CHARLOTTE CITY SCHOOLS 1943-1944

I breathlessly turned to page 5, under Elizabeth School .....and there she was!


Not Miss Blackboard. Not Miss Red Pencil......but Miss Chalk!


Yeah!!

As you can see, by 1943 she had graduated to the second grade.

How many of your grammar school teachers can you name? Keep in mind that this list is for the year 1943-44, but I doubt that there were many changes from the year before, when we would have been there. -Ed

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