Miss Flora

On July 26 my first grade teacher died. Born in 1906, she was 40-something the day we walked home from school together on a crisp fall day, me feeling quite important to be in her presence, pacing myself to keep up with her brisk steps. My family had moved to Forreston in the middle of my first grade year, and our second home in that town was across the street from her home where she lived with her parents. Mercifully, I have forgotten her exact words when I asked the prim, diminuative spinster in high heels and a suit how old she was, but do recall to this day her reply was sharp enough to teach me it was rude to ask a lady that question.

First grade in her classroom was traumatic for me. My Mt. Morris teacher, whom I loved, had already told me that I should expect changes--"they say 'thuh' instead of 'thee'" she quietly told me, referring to one of the few words I could read, "but there is a wonderful playhouse in Miss Flora's classroom." But that wasn't all, I painfully discovered. The Forreston first graders knew how to read sentences and spell, and I didn't. The first time Miss Flora began calling out words and my classmates put pencil to paper to write them down, I just stood up to look at someone else's paper to see what I should do. The entire class gasped and pointed and she flew across the room like a tiny bird to stop my cheating. One day Miss Flora kept me after school for 45 minutes staring at the blackboard until I could figure out what the word "paragraph" meant.

A dishtowel from the cute playhouse was once tied around my face when I talked out loud, and another time she jerked my braids hard from behind because my head was too close to the paper when I printed. Mainstreaming as an educational concept was not known then--we all just went to school together. Children who couldn't read or write were either ignored in the back of the room or ridiculed. She made life miserable for one little boy whom I still remember. He dropped out of school in second grade.

One day last week my brother called me from Florida to say he'd seen her obituary in the hometown newspaper. I'd forgotten that he too had been in her first grade. "What I remember about her," he said, "is that when we were quarantined (one of my sisters had polio in the fall of 1949) and couldn't go trick or treating at Halloween, she brought candy to our house."

Generations of children really did get a solid foundation from her, I know that intellectually when I look back and realize all the basics I learned in her class. Still, I was pleased to hear that little snippet of her kindness to a suffering and frightened family. My own memories needed a little balancing.