Dad - In His Words

I never went to pre-school-either because there was none around or it wasn’t in fashion at the time-I don’t know which. While I can’t truthfully say I don’t remember much about kindergarten I do remember the name of my teachers, Miss Alison and Miss Carter. There are pictures in the boxes somewhere of my class and many of the classmates went right through high school together. In first grade I had Miss Jack as a teacher and in second grade a Mrs. Mackey. And in third grade Miss Brown, who thought I had a very good singing voice (if she could hear me now), Fourth grade I was in Mrs. Evart’s class. Of these first four classes I don’t remember much but in the fifth grade my teacher was Mrs. Smith and I recall our making plywood cutouts of Robin Hood and his Band and putting them around the room. It was in fifth grade that my folks decided that I should skip a half a grade so in February I went from the second half of fifth grade to the fist half of sixth grade. This put me in a January Class where I stayed until my senior year in high school. Miss Havilcheck was my sixth grade teacher and we all thought she was a real tough cookie. When I met her in later years I found she really was a wonderful person. She kept an interest in me, Dave and John for years through her contacts with my mother. It was in sixth grade that we started changing classes and had a number of teachers. It’s funny how you remember your opinions of some of those teachers. Miss Hanna was a regular substitute, whom we all hated. She had red hair and we all thought it was a wig and made much fun of it. Miss Barber was the science teacher and we really had a bad time with her. Of course we thought all these teachers were ancient while they probably were in their 30,s or even their 20,s.

Fairfax School was about 1/2 mile from our house on E. Fairfax so we walked to school each day. There probably were busses for those farther away but I cannot recall them and certainly never rode one during my whole school period. Fairfax School was on Lee Rd just opposite Clarendon RD. Our street E. Fairfax ran into Lee Rd on the opposite side from the school so when we walked to school we had to walk to the corner of Clarendon and Lee where “Mac” the friendly policeman made sure we crossed the street safely. When you got to be a sixth grader you could get on the “street patrol” which assisted “Mac” by keeping all the kids in line waiting to cross the street. Fairfax had two playgrounds, girls and boys. At recess time we went to our respective playground to play for the recess period. The games we played were the usual, baseball, tag, as well trading baseball cards or throwing them against the school wall, the one getting closest getting the cards thrown. For the most part I went home for lunch since I lived so close. We had 50 minutes for lunch so we could make it. It was more fun to take our lunch however since we could spend time with our friends on the playground during the lunch period. Fairfax was a wonderful school with excellent teachers. Everytime I go by it today I am sorry they tore down my school and put up the modern one that is there now. Probably more efficient but it doesn’t have the friendly look that was at the old school.