Grade School Years

Grade School Days

Lena Whitmore Elementary School (Moscow, Idaho)

1st- Grade- my teacher was Mrs.Fish. I remember walking down the hill, then turning left to go to school. This was the only year I went to school in Moscow. It was a nice newer brick school that is still there. It had less vegetation in the 1960s and seemed bigger.

Harrison Elementary School (Twin Falls, Idaho)

2nd Grade - Mrs. Pay, an older graying-blonde woman was our teacher. I had just moved to Twin Falls. My neighbor across the street Rusty was in my class and wet his pants while sitting at his desk and it dripped onto the floor and made a big puddle underneath. The kids in my class were mean and chased a girl named Sharon Knight.  She had kind of ragged clothes, uncombed hair and was sort of dirty. They said she had fleas. They would touch her and then chase you and if they touched you you had fleas. I feel sad and awful remembering it. Since I seem to recall disturbing things, I must have known this was cruel. I do not remember doing it, I tried to be nice to her, but I did not stop it either. I don’t remember any specific friends of my own. I payed a lot with my brothers at home.

2nd grade

3rd Grade- My teacher Mrs. Erikson was not very tall with stiffly sprayed, big-bunned, jet- black hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. My main memory was when a boy in my class named Ricky Adams went back to look in the sink at another boy’s throw-up or vomit and threw-up on top of it. I also became friends with the librarian Mrs. Depew who introduced me to chapter books. I left her a card over the holidays in her desk, but she died and never returned. Later in High School her husband Mr. Depew was a teacher there and he knew I had been her friend. Must have found the card….

3rd grade

4th Grade - Miss Tanner was a new, cute, young teacher dating another teacher in the school.  She would try to get our attention by standing on her desk. My friends were Jay Dodds, the Harshburger twins Gay and Joy…(Gay was more my friend) and I had a crush on a very shy, totally white-headed boy with white eyelashes named Dan Massey (I think) who lived across from the school.

4th grade with cold sores

5th Grade -Mrs. Von Gørtler was a very stiff, fancy dressed and highly make-upped teacher who gave my my only B in grade school. I received it in penmanship! I had most of the same friends from the year before. I was not really shy, but not super social, pretty studious. We played a fun game of kick ball around the baseball bases at recess sometimes and some boy/girl games, but mostly sat and visited under the extremely small trees. I liked being at home and reading.

5th grade

6th Grade- My teacher Mrs. Mitchell was older, small with short brown hair and very well organized. I liked her class. She had a merit system where we got points each day for good things we did and lost them for things we should not be doing. I got the trophy at the end of the year for "Most Merits” and also one for a math award. She probably was not as old as I remember, but I respected her and still remember the house she lived in. 

6th grade

I really liked school. I was excited for fall and the start of the school year, but also loved summers. However, I never had birthday parties really since my birthday was in the summer and it was not as easy to contact people as it is today.

During this time I lived at 1223 Lawndale Drive in Twin Falls off of North Blue Lakes Blvd. There was a large Church-owned field behind our house and behind the houses across the street was the Holiday Inn Golf Course where my brothers and I would play golf sometimes. We would walk to the Blue Lakes Sporting Goods Store to buy candy on quite a busy road all by ourselves. We built a tree house in a big tree up on Blue Lakes Blvd. and played in the field behind our house. (Once my brothers accidentally burned down a haystack there when they lit a match to see in the tunnels they created in it. The firemen thought they had burned in the fire, but they were hiding under their beds). We would play games of Capture the Flag with the neighborhood kids in the evenings.  I was a fast runner. My brother Jason Andrew was born while we lived there on February 17th, 1967. He slept in my room for 2 years and I would sing him to sleep. I remember when I would go to bed being afraid a fire would start during the night that would burn down the house and concerned burglars would come in my window, but mostly of fires. We had boy babysitters until one day when I told my parents how Chuck who lived across the street used to rub my back when I was going to bed in my nightgown and stand me up on the bed and say he wished I was this tall. Looking back I see how inappropriate that was and see why my parents were concerned. Soon I babysat my brothers a lot. They were busy and crazy and pole vaulted onto a mattress in our front yard. I remember one time tying Jason to the tree while babysitting. I even performed a marriage ceremony for my brother Chris to a neighbor Kim Bybee one year in the back yard behind the fence. Living life in the 1960’s was more hands-on living than the cyber world of today. I had a good childhood and cannot believe I remember all my teacher’s names! Perhaps because they opened my young mind. I love teachers and teaching!

Quote from a biographical paper I wrote during grade school called "My Life in Brief": "So now my life sisterless, brother tormented, is kept happy with school, church, piano, 4-H, and growing up to help make a better world"