Memories of DuVal School

Memories of DuVal School
Fort Smith, Arkansas
by Rosemary Farnsworth Erickson

April 8, 2008

DuVal was a very important part of my childhood years. Until I was seven years old, we lived on 13th Street only a block from the school which was on the corner of North 14th and L Streets. It became the personal playground of the two Farnsworth girls and all our neighborhood friends, too. I started to DuVal first grade in 1938. My sister Patricia, who was one year older naturally began first grade before I did. It seems I was very lonely at home without her, and sometimes went to school with her and sat in Miss Lola Allen's first grade room, too. It is amazing that she allowed that. I could hardly wait to get to start school, and I loved every year! No wonder I became an elementary teacher.
DuVal was an impressive building built in 1888 and rebuilt in 1 911 after a fire. A very wide cement walkway led up to the front door and a wide stairway of about 7 or 8 steps took you to the big double front doors. Over the doors was ornamental concrete work which added to its imposing appearance. It definitely was an attractive entrance with the school name above the doors. To my sorrow, DuVal was demolished in 1984. When a friend told me that DuVal would soon be gone and there would be an auction, I asked her to try to buy a child's chair for me, or perhaps a teacher's chair. She did go to the auction, but there were no children's chairs left, so she bought what she thought was a teacher's chair. It was definitely not the large desk chair I remembered from my teaching days, but was actually probably from the school kitchen. She shipped it to me, all paint stripped and repaired.... a cute old chair with criss cross wire bracing
underneath. I later painted it and had trailing ivy painted on it
and it proudly sits in my ivy papered kitchen. It is a precious DuVal reminder I get to live with every day.
DuVal was a red brick rectangular shaped building with three floors and a basement. The front door faced west and was on North 14th Street. I attended DuVal from first through 6th grades and then after graduating from the University of Arkansas in 1954, I taught first grade there for one year. That no doubt accounts for why I remember the building so well. Some of the same wonderful teachers who had taught me were still teaching there. Not surprisingly, the most important teacher who was still teaching there was first grade teacher Lola Allen. After a very "progressive" type teacher training at the University of Arkansas, Miss Allen literally taught me how to teach. I am forever grateful!
DuVal had a very wide central hall with classrooms on both sides, interior stairways on both the north side and south side in the center, and a stairway also at the east end of the hall. The staircases went from basement to third floor, but by the time I began first grade, the third floor was not in use. I remember just once going up there with a teacher to get something out of storage. It was spooky. I have always wondered why it was not used and if it was considered unsafe. Certainly in the 1940's when our classes were HUGE...sometimes as many as 50 students in a class, the teachers needed the extra space. The large enrollment came because of the influx of WWII military families at Camp Chaffee. Sunnymede housing development on O Street brought many new students to DuVal.
The classrooms were very large and each one had a 'cloak hall' beside it with hooks for our coats. Being banished to the cloak hall was a very common form of punishment. Sometimes spankings were administered by the teacher in the cloak hall, too. Classroom windows were huge and let in lots of light. Everything was bright and cheery inside because of those big windows. Most of the teachers had lots of plants growing in pots along the windows. The first floor had two large classrooms and the office complex on the north side, and three classrooms on the south side. At the east end behind the stairway was the teachers' lunch room and rest room. Upstairs the entire west side was one long large room with the school library in the south half and classroom seating with a stage on the north side. There were four more classrooms on that second floor. The stairways were wide and spacious. In fact everything was wide and spacious!
The basement at Duval School had the boys' restroom on one side and the girls' restroom on the other. The cafeteria and kitchen were on the southeast corner. The northeast corner had a large cement floored room where we had indoor games, square dancing and folk dancing where (eek) we had to dance with boys, and other bad weather group activities. I remember playing dodge ball in that room. All the mechanical equipment and heating boilers, etc. were in the basement on the north side of the building and it always looked VERY scary in there because you could feel the heat and see flames in the furnace. A 1984 news account of the school demolishing tells that the original boiler was still operational when the school came down. Outside access to the basement was from large double doors on the north and south sides where the stairways were..... and at the east end at ground level near the cafeteria where delivery trucks came and went.
The "Girls Side" play area was on the South, and the "Boys' Side" was on the North. In the 1940's and 50's each side had swings. climbing bars, teeter totters, and a baseball diamond area with a back stop. There were plenty of large trees for shade and a wide sidewalk around the south side of the building where we played jacks and jump rope. The boys played marbles, but we girls never did. We girls also never ventured on to the boys side. I remember playing Red Rover, Red Rover, let someone (name here) come over. That person tried to crash through our clasped hands. We also played 'Mother May I', Follow the Leader, etc.
The teachers had a yard duty schedule and there was always someone around to keep order and stop occasional fights. We did not have a scheduled recess time. School was serious business but we did have a PE period each day. Our other play time was at noon and before and after school. The playground was not fenced, so occasional neighborhood dogs would be roaming around for us to play with. The school faculty in the late 1930's and 1940's was a remarkable group of bright dedicated women. I do not remember the principal, but I believe one was named Spencer. I think the principal changed several times in those years because it was war time. The truth is, I know that the staff ran the school.... and did it very well. Our dear family friend, Coach Frank Jones was the principal in 1954 when I graduated from college and taught first grade at DuVal.
These are the teachers I remember well:
First grade - Lola Allen
Second grade - Minnie Hubbard
Third grade - Fredericka Upchurch
Fourth grade - _Ina(?) McCarroll
Fifth grade - Vera Heard
Sixth grade - Lois Dorcas and Rena Arnold
Library and "Auditorium" - Mrs. Mildred Mayo
I remember a Miss Martha Youmans who perhaps taught PE.
SPECIAL MEMORIES
Armistice Day, November 11, was always a special observance at DuVal. I remember the entire student body gathered in the big central hall and a patriotic program was presented on the west stairway. We had the flag salute, and always sang several patriotic songs like America the Beautiful and My Country 'Tis of Thee. At 11 AM, we observed several moments of silence because that was the exact time that the Armistice of WWI was signed.
Valentines Day was a favorite day for me! I remember making Valentines for days ahead and each teacher had a large decorated Valentine box in her room.....usually made out of a hat box I suspect. Paper doilies and crepe paper were key ingredients. There are many aspects of those celebrations that I am now uncomfortable with. I did not give a Valentine to everyone in my class.... and I don't think very many children did. It really became a popularity contest as I recall. The teacher took the Valentines out... one by one... read the name aloud and we went to the front to get our Valentines. Did some children receive no Valentines? I actually do not remember, but it is very possible. The number of Valentines received was the important part to selfish little me, and I remember going home and my sister and I would compare Valentines to see who had the most. A Valentine from a special boy with perhaps a lolly pop attached was a big thrill!
Miss Heard's 5th grade class was truly memorable because she was very very artistically creative in unusual ways. The things we did in that classroom could NEVER take place in any elementary school today! Miss Heard had two small power saws in her room, and when our class work was finished, we could saw and build things with hammer and nails and paint them, too! Can't you imagine the fear of lawsuits in this day and age? She also taught us to weave baskets in several different ways. These were skills I used years later as a Girl Scout leader and parent, too. What a marvelous year that was!
Miss Upchurch's third grade class was also special. She was very 'modern' in her teaching techniques for that day and age. I'll never forget our outstanding study of George Washington Carver. I still remember details of his life....all learned in the third grade. Because Carver introduced the cultivation of peanuts to the poor blacks in the deep south, we visited a Fort Smith peanut butter factory. That is the only field trip I ever remember taking in elementary school, and it was so exciting. Then we used the school cafeteria and made peanut butter cookies one day. Oh yes.... Miss Upchurch was very progressive, but she was totally traditional in the teaching of the core subjects. I remember spelling bees, and memorizing all the state capitols, too, and lots and lots of quizzes. Being a good student but really quite shy, I think I remember these because I could show off a bit.
Miss Allen's first grade classroom had a large child size playhouse, well furnished with little dishes, and dolls, etc. Again, when our work was finished, we were allowed to play quietly in the play house. We also got to do that when the weather was too bad to be outside. Miss Allen taught us to read by letter sounds, later called phonics. I am eternally grateful that I learned that way. She had made up a story about Tommy Brown for every letter sound, and the soft and hard sounds of the vowels. When I taught with her years later, I typed up all her stories and used them when I taught first grade in California. She was a creative innovator, and those stories and her methods should have been published.
Second grade with Miss Hubbard was a relaxing gentle year it seems. Maybe because Miss Hubbard read aloud to us every day! What a treat that was! We sat at tables and I recall putting my head on the table after lunch and listening to the Bobsey Twins, the Box Car Children, etc. She was a lovely lady and was the aunt of my best friend Sally Savage. Sally and her mother lived with Miss Hubbard and I sometimes played at her house on 15th Street.
Mrs. Mayo was a beautiful teacher who presided over the school library and small 'auditorium' stage area. In first through third grades we stayed in our classroom with the same teacher all day. In fourth grade, we "traveled". This meant we had a home room for half the day for basic subjects, and the other part of the day we went for other subjects in other rooms. Several days a week we got to be in the library to read. I don't even remember doing homework there or research, but perhaps we did. In the auditorium part of the huge room we had mock meetings and learned Roberts Rules of Order, had little debates and sometimes an educational movie. I thought Mrs. Mayo had the ideal job! One year, Mrs. Mayo introduced a project that had a huge impact on my later life as well as my sister's teaching career, too. She decided that we should make "puppets". What we actually made were marionettes. She gave us patterns and we did most of the work at home, but we did sew and stuff, and paint faces at school. We could make any sort of 'puppet' we wanted, and then we put on a show for the entire school.... and perhaps parents, too. Our father was a teacher at Junior High, and that school had a wonderful large marionette stage with real velvet curtains, footlights, etc. Daddy loaned DuVal the stage and so we puppeteers put on a marionette variety show. Patricia and I had made lady puppets in lovely pastel silk dresses, and to the strains of "Blue Danube", played on the piano by our friend
Sally Tisdale, the two puppets did a graceful dance. I am delighted to say, we were judged the best of the show..... or somehow I definitely remember we were the best. That began a hobby for us that carried over immediately into our Girl Scout troop and a group of us started a little business in high school. We were paid to put on 'puppet shows' for school carnivals, church events, birthday parties, etc. Later, in California with my daughter's Girl Scout troop we did the same thing with great success for years. Sister Patricia taught 5th grade in Pennsylvania and every year in the spring her class created puppets, wrote, produced and presented original marionette shows. Thank you Miss Mildred Mayo!