With back-to-school time just around the corner, I asked some friends to recall some of their memories from their days in the Quillayute Valley School system. Surprisingly nobody recalled anything about what they learned, or did they?
A number of former classmates remembered the moving of teachers/principals small cars.
Jacqueline Nelson — I remember about 10 high school boys picking up the principal’s car that was parked in front of the high school building and carrying it all the way down to the front of the intermediate school and just dropping it off there, and I mean they hand-carried it! Fun times!
Sue Nelson — Not sure when but the football team use to put Mr. Jones’ car on top the old gym, for Homecoming I think.
Many pranks on teachers:
Jacqueline Nelson — I remember my brother collecting hair from family hair cuts and then cutting a rubber ball in half and gluing the hair to the rubber ball and giving it to Mr. Lewis (His sixth-grade teacher) for a toupee! Yeah, that went over well.
Leslie Khoury — In Mr. Hall’s class everyone (except me of course) would knock their books on the floor at a pre-arranged time.
Don Noble — We got out of logging class one time and somehow a mouse got loose in the school halls.
Char Carte — Making the sub Mrs. Huggins so mad she was screaming. And, I will own up to tying Coach Vaughan’s shoe laces together with Tami Johnson on a basketball trip.
Carolyn Fairchild Ellis (for her husband) A student injected Mrs. Rupp’s plants with Purex and she couldn’t figure out why they were dying. Not nice.
Other memories:
Jon Anderson — My Personal experience on a gym hook. I was met at the door of the bus and escorted into the gym and hung just before the first bell. Made it down and all the way to the study hall before the second bell.
Ray Meinzer — I remember when someone dumped a bag of shotgun pellets in the hall and it became a skating rink. Plus the lead shot marked the floors whenever they were stepped on.
Beaver School memories:
Corlie Whitehead — At Beaver School we sold tickets to the May Day Luncheon and the prizes were dolls and clothes that were on display way up on top of the cupboards that were in the hall between classes for us girls to moon over.
Don Gentry — The girls played the usual hopscotch and jump rope while the boys would sneak into the woods behind the school to climb the vine maple or find garter snakes along the fence by the highway to torment girls with.
Embarrassing moments
Leslie Khoury — I will not name names but I recall a female chewing Copenhagen and puking her guts out in the middle of the football field as the drill team practiced around her!
And finally:
Christine Tuttle — I don’t have any pranks or jokes to tell but I do have an amazing story about a teacher with compassion. Her name was Mrs. Thompson. She was my kindergarten teacher in 1971. School had already started that year and I was a week late because I was getting my hearing aids fitted. Oh, how I did not want to miss the first day, so the day came, I came into the classroom with my very noticeable hearing aid battery strapped to my chest, the teacher asked all the boys and girls to please sit down and said, “I want to introduce you to someone.” She picked me up and stood me on a desk in front of everyone and told them who I was and why I was wearing this contraption and that, “She is just like you and me.” I never ever got teased by my classmates or by anyone … all because of her.
School is not only where we learned academically but a place we learned how to deal with the “big world.” It can be a scary place where you can feel different or unsure or if you are lucky enough to have Mrs. Thompson as your teacher, everything will be OK.
