In Memory of Flora Downey

About an outstanding first grade teacher.

In Memory of Flora Downey

 

By Elton Camp

 

 

            I really liked Mrs. Downey and thought she was very beautiful, although, in retrospect, I realize that she was only ordinary looking. She could snap her fingers louder than anybody I’ve ever seen.  I wanted so much to do it too, but couldn’t and I still can’t.

 

            Mrs. Downey was by no means a “great” person as the world generally measures such things, but she was an outstanding first grade teacher whom I still recall with fondness even sixty-five years after having been one of her students. 

 

            “It’s time to take up lunch money or pick up tickets,” Mrs. Downey announced early each morning.  Some, including me, paid weekly and had only to get the coupon each day.  The others went to her desk with their money.  When a child had no money, Mrs. Downey kindly paid it from her purse. The free lunch program didn’t exist in that day.  Such a clerical matter was a waste of instructional time, but necessary since it provided a means by which the lunchroom workers could know how many meals to fix each day. 

 

            One day, our class was in line to enter the cafeteria when I was dismayed to discover that I didn’t have my ticket.  In a panic, I rushed back to the classroom to hunt for it.  It was nowhere to be found.  I walked slowly back, wondering if I would have to do without lunch.  When I got to the ticket taker, I didn’t have one to surrender. 

 

            “If you’ll let me go ahead and eat, my mother will come pay for it.  She’s a teacher here,” I explained to the cashier. 

 

            Mrs. Downey realized what was going on and rushed over to my rescue.  She pulled me aside so the other children wouldn’t hear. 

 

            “Where did you have it last?”  

 

            “I don’t know.”  I fought back tears.  The loss of my ticket seemed like a major catastrophe. 

 

            “Why here it is,” she said.  She spotted the edge sticking out of the cuff of my long sleeve shirt, right where I then remembered putting it.  I was so relieved.  She would have been well within her rights to scold me for my carelessness, but she didn’t.  It wasn’t in her nature. 

 

            One time I got into a fight with another boy, George Walls, at a table in the cafeteria.  We were competitors for the attention of Mrs. Downey. 

 

            “She’s gonna sit by me,” I insisted.

           

            “No, she sat by you last time.  She’s sitting with me.”

 

            The argument immediately erupted into a fist fight.  She rushed over and broke it up.  “What are you boys doing?” she demanded.  When she learned the reason, she responded, “I’m not going to sit by either of you.”

 

            I’m sure she had to struggle not to laugh at two small boys with a crush on her. To my dismay, she pulled a bench from another table, angled toward our table and sat at the end, but a few inches nearer to him than to me.  I jealously felt that he’d won after all.  I never did have much use for George after that.

 

            When she taught reading, Mrs. Downey had the children read aloud in turn.  The slow readers, who read without expression, tried everyone’s patience.  They called each word individually and had to be told many words. I found it so tiresome.  Thanks to my father who had prepared me at home, reading was very easy.

 

            When Mrs. Downey learned us well enough, she divided the class and seated us into three reading groups with names.  The designations thinly disguised that they were the smart kids, the average kids and the dumb kids. We all knew what it really meant, so the pretense was useless. We sat separately all the time according to our reading groups.  It was called “Ability Grouping” by the teachers, but not in our hearing. 

 

            “You’re in the dumb bunch.  Stay over there,” might be said to a classmate who dared stray far from his assigned area.  Children were sometimes brutally frank, but most always truthful.  Civility is partly a process of learning how and when to lie or at least to keep quiet.

 

             A girl in our class named Rosemary Roberts had been born without a breastbone. This birth defect and related problems caused her to be extremely sickly-looking.  Her arms and legs were spindly, her chest collapsed, and her hair frizzy.  Rosemary sat directly in front of one of the radiators.  Unaware of the facts of her condition, I had concluded that its heat was what made her look so shriveled up.  Post hoc, ergo propter hoc was at work.  She sat in front of the radiator, thus that affected her appearance or so I thought with my lack of knowledge of logic fallacies. 

 

            One day, Mrs. Downey undertook to reseat us.  To my dismay, my new seat was to be the one that Rosemary had occupied. 

 

            “I don’t want to sit there,” I protested. 

 

            “You’ll sit where I tell you,” she insisted.  She couldn’t give in to such blatant insubordination in front of the entire class. 

 

             I began to cry out of fear that the radiator would cause me to come to look like Rosemary. Yet, I didn’t want to say that out of concern for the girl’s feelings.  Mrs. Downey, in desperation, got my mother to come from her classroom.  “I don’t know why he’s acting like that.  He won’t tell me a thing.  Maybe you can figure it out.”  Only then did I reveal the reason for being so uncooperative. When she explained Rosemary’s real problem, it made sense.  I took the assigned seat without further commotion.  I hope Rosemary didn’t figure out what was going on. 

 

            Mrs. Downey took great pride in the appearance of her room.  In those days, teachers voluntarily started work about a week early and paid for materials from their meager incomes.  I especially recall a large cutout of Mother Goose, riding on a flying goose that was high on a sidewall of the room. She had an aquarium, but I can’t remember what type of fish it contained. The main thing that stands out is when somebody brought in a live land snail for the class to see. One of the kids, thinking the snail needed water, placed it into the aquarium where it perished by the time it was discovered the next morning. 

 

            In the spring, we had a big Easter egg hunt.  We left the room while the eggs were being hidden.  Upon our return, the teacher gave us paper sacks and told us to find as many as we could.  A great many books were opened and standing on shelves.  Behind each was an egg. It was obvious and easy.  While others looked in unlikely places or wandered about aimlessly, I quickly filled my sack.

 

            “Children, count your eggs and when I call your name, tell me how many you found,” she directed. 

 

            I tried to count mine, but had so many that they rolled round too much.   When I said that I didn’t know how many, the teacher seemed annoyed.  When she came over and looked into my sack, she saw the reason. 

 

            “How did you find so many?” she asked in surprise.  “I’ll count them for you.”

 

            The prize was a candy Easter bunny sitting on “eggs.” The eggs were additional small pieces of candy.  The whole thing was wrapped in a translucent red plastic.  I liked the plastic better than the rabbit or candy and was pleased with my prize. 

 

            One day the class got quite a shock.  It was rest period so we had our heads down on our desks.  Suddenly, we were aroused by a loud crash.  Chunks of plaster shot down into the room.  Children struck by the falling debris began to scream.  From the ceiling, a man’s legs extended into the room. None of the youngsters were injured, but I can’t be sure about the man.   He was a worker who accidentally walked on the ceiling rather than the joists. He probably was as shook up as we were. 

 

            “Get in line and march into the hall,” Mrs. Downey commanded.  She probably feared that the whole ceiling might fall.  Our room was the talk of the school that day so we felt very important. 

 

            During first grade, the school put on a stage performance that featured various children.  It was held at night in the auditorium with a large crowd in attendance. I didn’t have any usable talent for such a thing, so was assigned to do a recitation. It began, “Dear Grandmother, I am writing you this letter,” but the rest of seems impossible to retrieve from memory. It’s kicking around in there somewhere just out of reach, but I can’t get any of the other words to emerge.  I sat at a small desk we brought from home to do my part in the program.

 

            Toward the end of October, the school put on a Halloween Carnival to raise money for basic supplies. To my dismay, my parents sent me as a witch in an elaborate black costume with a black pointed hat. It was a costume far more suitable for a girl.  That disturbed me, but I didn’t say anything. Nobody made fun of me, which was a relief.  I rather expected to be ridiculed by the other boys. It’s possible they simply didn’t know who I was in a dress.  I imagine mother had to make use of what was available.  Money was scarce in those days.

 

            “That’s one of the best costumes I’ve ever seen,” said one of the parents.  Others expressed similar sentiments.  With that much attention, I didn’t too much mind being a witch, but was glad when the evening was over.

 

            The only other costume that I recall seeing was a black outfit with a luminous imprint of a skeleton.  It was more funny than scary.  Beyond that, I can’t recall a thing that took place during the carnival. 

            The first grade was quite easy, but not as much was demanded in school in those days. Since I was well prepared for reading, it was simple. If we were reading silently and found a word we didn’t know, Mrs. Downey told us to hold up our hand and she’d come around and tell it.  I didn’t find any like that, but wanted her attention, so I occasionally pointed to a word and held up my hand anyway.  I think she recognized my pretense, but kindly said nothing. 

 

            The main reader was Down the River Road, which was actually fairly interesting. It was not the “Run Spot run” type book that later came into use in the lower grades. It featured Alice, Jerry, and a dog with the name Jip.  For some reason I still recall seeing a story which used the word “truck” to mean a bunch of worthless junk. I’ve not seen that word used in that sense since that day, but it somehow impressed me how the same word could mean such different things.

 

            Even from the first grade it was obvious to me that math was both my weakest subject and the one that I liked least. I hated to memorize dull things and so didn’t commit to memory the basic facts of addition.

 

            “Never count on your fingers,” Mrs. Downey sternly charged.  “If you do, you’ll never be any good at arithmetic.”

 

            I made dots on paper to serve the same purpose. That was foolish and a real handicap in learning math. I still sometimes do it in my mind even now when I have to add things without a calculator. They’re now mental dots, but dots just the same.  Mrs. Downey was correct. 

 

            One afternoon, the public health nurse came and showed the class a filmstrip about hookworms.  I was horrified to learn about the parasites and only my parents’ assurance that I couldn’t possibly have them calmed me.  Later, I realized that I’d been an eyewitness to the final stages of the work of the famous Rockefeller Sanitary Commission war against hookworms in the South.  The worms had been a serious problem for decades following the Civil War and were a factor in holding back progress in the South.  A group of rich northerners and do-gooders undertook to eradicate the menace.  Such interference by outsiders was typically resented, but in that case, the Commission performed a vital service.  Hookworms had been wiped out to such an extent that the filmstrip, shown in 1946, was nearly the last gasp of an effort that was no longer needed. 

 

            On the last day of first grade when the final report cards were distributed, each one indicated if the child had passed or failed the grade. On the back, the teacher had written in script either “Promoted” or “Retained.” A boy who couldn’t read script asked me to tell what his said. 

 

            “It says Retained, so that means you failed,” I announced thoughtlessly.  

 

            He started to sob.  I intensely wished I’d minded my own business.  I remember the deep shame of my guilt even after more than sixty years. 

 

            Mrs. Downey had been married for a short time, but her husband had left her for another woman.  She carried a torch for him the rest of his life despite the way he’d treated her.  “I had to cross the street, on a shopping trip to Gadsden, to avoid meeting him face-to-face,” she told my mother.  “It was terribly embarrassing.” 

 

            In her later working years, Mrs. Downey returned to her father’s home in Double Springs in Winston County to see after him. At first she lived in a trailer in his yard, but later moved into the house.  He lived to be 100 years old and kept his mind.

 

            For years, Mrs. Downey had maintained contact with her friends in Marshall County.  That ended when several of them arrived for a party at her house.  It’d been planned long in advance with recent follow-up.  Her associates arrived, but she was nowhere to be found.  They waited for a couple of hours, but she didn’t appear.

 

            “She knew we were coming,” Mildred Pennington said in disgust.  “It was all set.  She let us come all that way and then wasn’t even at home.  I’m not gonna bother with her anymore.”

 

            When we heard what happened, we suspected that she might be in a nursing home.  It seemed likely that, if she’d died, we’d have learned about it since we then lived only thirty-five miles away.  After some time, we decided to check the nursing home at Double Springs.  Although half expecting that she might be dead, I asked at the office, “Do you happen to have Flora Downey here?”

 

            “We surely do,” the pleasant woman replied.  She supplied the room number and directions.  There she was, seated in a wheelchair, but nicely dressed and with much the same appearance as she had years before.

 

            “I’m Eloise Camp,” my mother said.  “I worked with you at Guntersville.  This is my son, Elton.  You had him in the first grade.”

 

            “Oh, yes, I remember you.  You were a good student,” she said with a gracious smile.  “It’s so wonderful to see you both.”

 

            We were elated that she was in such good condition even if unable to live independently.  I began to wonder if she had, perhaps, only taken a fall and might be able to return home.  Then the truth began to emerge.

 

            “How many years did you teach?” my mother inquired. 

 

            “Oh, I’m still teaching” was her smiling response. 

 

            She’d been confined to the institution for years, but was skilled at putting on a front.  A couple more questions showed that she had no idea who we were.  She was in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease.  We never returned to visit her again.  It was just too painful to see her in that condition.  Mrs. Downey has now been dead for many years.  I still recall her with fondness and doubtless many others of her students feel likewise.  It has been said that a teacher “touches eternity.”  Thank you, Mrs. Flora Downey, for giving so many a good start in education.