Schools:  Retired Teachers Reminisce, Sabine Parish
Source:  Sabine Index, Many, La., Feb. 28 1996
Submitted by: Carl Dilbeck
              carlrad@earthlink.net 

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   One of our readers and good friends, Doris Coburn of Florien,
compiled a unique piece for The Sabine Index by interviewing three
retired teachers of the parish. The teachers, Nellie Addison Lucius,
Bessie Jordan Callens and Pearl Lilly Cook Pugh, have a combined 278
years of living (they are all over 90-years-old), and 116 years of
teaching, with perhaps a few years out to care for their children.
   All three teachers finished school at Florien, and all taught at
one time at Florien, and still live in the Florien area.
   "Memories are precious and should be recorded and passed on to
future generations," Coburn stressed. "We share these with you just to
jog your memory of school days. Certainly, today's teachers should
rejoice with their lot as teachers. Maybe you were once a student of
one of these teachers and you may want to drop them a note thanking
them for their patience and love for you. They would get it just by
addressing it to Florien."

Mrs. Bessie Jordan Callens
   Mrs. Callens was born March 6, 1901, the oldest daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. W.D. Jordan. She lived about a mile from the Mt. Carmel Community,
and started school at the age of six, with Miss Bertha Gandy (later
Miller) as her teacher.
   "I remember well that the Wheel Primer was the first reader, and on
the first page, it said, 'Baby loves Mamma and Mamma loves baby'- my
first reading words," Mrs. Callens recalled.
   Mrs. Callens attended the Mt. Carmel School for three years before
her family moved and she began attending Toro School. Miss Alice Hardin
and Miss Lizzie Williams were the teachers there. She also recalled Mr.
Kyle Litton, and Dennis Sermon, college graduates teaching at the
school.
   After the tenth grade, Mrs. Callens attended Louisiana Tech in
Ruston and earned a teaching certificate. She began teaching schools
in the winter time and attending Louisiana Normal (today, Northwestern
State University) during the summers.
   "From the time, I started to school in about 1906, until I retired
in 1956, 1 was never out of school," Mrs. Callens recalled.
   "After several years of teaching and going to school summers, I got
a lifetime certificate," she said. "I kept teaching winters and going
to school summers until I got two years of college credits then I could
teach at any level, even in high school. I got the AB degree during a
period when the schools were closed due to lack of funds."
   Mrs. Callens taught at Converse for two years, then transferred in
1930 to Florien so she would be able to look after her father, who was
in poor health.
   In 1935, her family built a home near Florien School. She still
lives in that home. Mrs. Callens married in 1945 and became a widow in
1980.
   She recalls of her school teaching days, "When I started to school
as a child, we had to buy all our supplies, even books. We hoped an
older child somewhere would have books we could borrow or buy cheaper
from them. Paper and pencils were expensive for us. When Huey P. Long
came into office, the children's books were furnished for the first
time and a little later, paper and "cedar pencils" were also
furnished."
   Mrs. Callens recalls the days of Depression in the 1920s through
30s. "In 1935, 1 was working at a booth at a basketball tournament and
someone came to me and said, 'If you have any money in the bank, you
better go get it. The banks are closing tonight," she said. "That
scared me as I had a little bit of money there, so I asked the
principal if I could have an hour off to go to Many on a little
business. He told me to go ahead. I rushed up there, got my little bit
of money, brought it home and put it in a fruit jar, and buried it in
the back yard. Sure enough, the banks closed and many people lost all
they had. Our schools were closing also and we were being paid in
script which was worth about 40 cents on the dollar if you could find
a merchant to take it. Most of us had gardens and chickens and cows,
so we had food, just no money."
   Mrs. Callens recalls teaching teenagers at Florien. "Our classroom
was on the second floor of the building with a window that opened out
onto the roof of the auditorium," she said. "I had to go to class early
or the boys would climb out that window and would not come in."
   "I retired in 1956, a few years before I had to, but I wanted to
travel a little with my husband," Mrs. Callens said. "I loved teaching.
You never get it out of your system. When it's time for the bell, when
it's time for recess, time for lunch, you just never quite get away
from wishing you were there. I miss most the fellowship with the
teachers and knowing the children and their parents. . I used to know
every child in the community, but now I don't know them. Also, there
is so much required of the teachers now, I don't know how young people
get through it all.
   "If I had my life to live over, if I were young and had a choice, I
would do the same thing again," she concluded. "I loved being a
teacher."

Nellie Addison Lucius
   Mrs. Lucius was born in 1902 and started school at Mt. Carmel, at
the age of five or six. She noted the school at the time was in the
church house, and was not a high school.
   "I walked four or five miles to school and I was such a little
thing," she said. "I wonder how I ever made it, especially during the
winter.
   Mrs. Lucius said she remembered little about her first year in
school, but did remember her first teacher being Inez Bishop.
   "I went to Mt. Carmel through the 10th grade which was all the
grades we had, but the last grade was not accepted for graduation
since it was not a certified high school," Mrs. Lucius recalled. "In
order to get our diploma, we transferred to Florien and I had to
repeat the 10th grade.
   "Mr. G.C. Reeves was principal and somehow he took an interest in
me, maybe because he was a good friend of my father who Was a school
board member at the time," she continued. She said it was he who
encouraged her to attend college and take the teacher examination.
   When she was in the 10th grade at Florien, she decided to see if
she could borrow money to go to college. "I got to thinking about it
and went to the bank," Mrs. Lucius said. "They loaned me $100 just on
my word that I would be teaching in the fall."
   The money took her through six weeks of school at Louisiana Normal
in Natchitoches, and she earned her teaching certificate and began
teaching around the parish. She said she, too, taught in the winter
and went to school during the summer.
   "After a couple years of teaching, I decided I should go back to
Florien and get my diploma, so I did and took the eleventh grade when
Mr. Leopold was principal I graduated in 1923 at the top of my class
of 15 students."
   "Mr. Reeves was Parish Superintendent and he asked me to go to a
little school out from Many, and told me there would be another teacher
so that there would be two of us. The other teacher did not show up
and Mr. Reeves could not find another. There I was with seven grades
and 62 students and I was only 22 years old! That group gave me the
least amount of trouble of any group I ever taught. The only problem
I remember was two little boys who drew some ugly pictures and were
showing them around making the kids giggle. I found out and they got
punished a little bit. There was a man 24 years old in the 7th grade,
several girls in their twenties, and I learned to combine some classes,
and the older girls helped with the little ones. Sometimes, Mr. Reeves
would come out and stay half a day and help me, and lo and behold, one
day he came with the State Supervisor! I was scared half to death."
   Mrs. Lucius recalled attending school at Mary Hardin Baylor College
in Texas for one year, after learning her sister and three of her
cousins would be going to the school. She enjoyed the college, but
transferred back to Sabine Parish one year later. She eventually ended
up at the Plainview School. The principal of the school, Dan Lucius,
later became her husband.
   After several years, the Lucius' moved to Florien and Mrs. Lucius
taught Home Economics for half a year. She continued to work on her AB
degree and went to Mt. Carmel to teach for three years before coming
back to Florien when a Mr. Skinner was principal. In all, she taught
at Florien 14 years, while continuing to take classes at Northwestern
in various subjects.
   By adding some credits from Stephen F Austin in Nacogdoches, Tex.,
LSU by extension, and extension courses from the University of Arkansas
and Arkansas State Teachers College, Mrs. Lucuis was able to earn her
Master's Degree in Education, and a total 54 hours of credits in
Education.
   "It was a hard way to get an education," she said of her daily
commute to Stephen F Austin in Nacogdoches, where she eventually earned
her Master's. She commuted with three other Sabine teachers to the
college. "The three other teachers and 1 would leave school after
3 p.m., drive 95 miles for three classes and return home after
midnight. Then back to school the next morning, keep our homes, be
involved in the church- I've taught the same class of women for over
40 years- and study."
   "As we teachers drove back and fourth to SFA, we took turns
driving," Mrs. Lucius continued. "One teacher got a new car with all
the new power equipment on it. We were hurrying, probably driving 75
miles an hour to get to class, when she suddenly slammed on the brakes.
The car spun completely around, down into a shallow ditch and back
onto the highway, headed in the right direction, and without ever
slowing down, she kept driving to SFA. For 70 miles, not one person
said a word. When we got into class, the driver had such a nervous
reaction, everyone knew something was wrong. Needless to say, she
didn't slam on the brakes again."
   Mrs. Lucius said she graduated fourth or fifth in her class both at
Northwestern and Stephen F Austin.
   "In 1955, 1 retired a few years before I had to, but my husband had
been retired for some time, my children were out of school, and I was
tired," Mrs. Lucius recalled.
   "Do I get a little tingle when it's time for school to start? No, I
don't! I have enjoyed every minute of retirement. There have been lots
of students who have come through my classes that I'm very proud of.
Some still live in the community, some away. My school years were happy
years and so have the ones since been."
   Mrs. Lucius became a widow in 1970 when her husband suffered a heart
attack.
   She sums her teaching experience with a beautiful poem:

Let me be a little sweeter as the older I grow;
Let me have joy in my heart with my face all aglow
Let me be as blameless as is possible to be;
Let me have a blithful spirit, always happy and free.
Let me see beauty in others, no blame in any way
Let me be gentle and kind with every passing day.
And when I come to journey's end and life on earth is done,
Let me always be remembered for the good deeds I have done.

Pearl Lilly Cook Pugh
   Mrs. Pugh, married first to Harvey Cook and then to John Pugh, was
born in 1905 about 100 yards from where she now lives, in the Florien
area.
   As a child, she lived at the Darby place, which is now owned by
Claude Jordan.
   "While living on the Darby place, I was old enough to go to school,
but my parents wouldn't let me walk the three miles alone, so I had to
wait a year for my brother to get old enough to walk with me to
school," Mrs. Pugh explained. "We had to cross a creek on a foot-log,
and it surely was a dangerous walk.
   When we moved to the new house, we were only one mile from Toro
School, so we could walk that easy, except for when the weather was
real bad or the creek over flowed. Then Dad would take us to school in
the wagon."
   "At that time and even now Toro Creek was bad to overflow and is
still bad," she added. "The road gets so bad even yet. My Dad would
have to haul kids in the wagon with the mules, but he saw to it we went
to school every day. At Toro School, Mrs. Pugh recalled the first
teachers as being Miss Alice Hardin and Miss Lizzie Williams, and later
Dennis Sermon, Earl Cook, Kyle Litton and Clarence Leonard. Her first
grade teacher was Miss Jean Stringer.
   "I remember that I had long hair and Mamma had to press my hair and
scrub me clean every day," she recalled. "One time the school tested us
for lice and worms and they told Mamma I was the only child who didn't
have any. She still, scrubbed us every day. Most kids took a bath maybe
once a week."
   Other teachers she remembers in her early schooling years include
Miss Florence Duggan and Miss Ivory Jordan.
   Mrs. Pugh said she remembers well learning "Mental Arithmetic," that
is, the art of computing figure in one's head rather than on paper.
Mrs. Pugh, too, had to transfer to Florien School to enable her to
graduate. She left Toro School after the ninth grade.
   "We went to Florien in a covered wagon pulled by mules, but in the
winter, even the wagon would sometimes get stuck and sometimes the
children would have to get out and help push the wagon in the mud,"
she recalled. "When they started using buses, they were always getting 
tuck. Sometimes, they would overlay the road with old cross ties or
logs in order to get across the bad places. It's been almost a hundred
years and that road is still bad. It's time and a half for the state
to do something. I've prayed all my life for a good road out here."
   "When I started to college in Natchitoches, there were only two cars
in Florien and a terrible road as bad as this one is today. Between the
two cars, we usually got to school, but didn't get to come home very
often."
   Mrs. Pugh graduated in 1924, when Mr. Leopold was principal at
Florien.
   She recalled of graduation time, "There was one teacher who didn't
think some of the kids had made good enough grades to graduate and even
though Mr. Leopold had said let them graduate, he would not argue. That
night with 35 or 40 of us on stage, those boys who had not passed,
climbed a light pole and cut the wires so no one would know they
weren't in the group. To pass the last math test which I surely did not
understand, I took my book and went out on the hill and lay down in the
grass and memorized all the rules and somehow did well on the test."
   After graduating from high school, Mrs. Pugh began attending
Louisiana Normal (Northwestern State University). The next summer, she
earned a grade two certificate and in the summer of 1926, she received
the third grade certificate. She taught at Bay Springs, Oak Grove when
Leon Law was principal. The next year, she taught at Toro School, when
Harvey Arthur was principal. She married Harvey Cook at the end of the
year, and took some time out from teaching to be with her children.
   "As one of 10 children whose mother was always home, I knew how
important that time was," Mrs. Pugh said. "I had two girls and two boys
and the two girls are school teachers. We moved back to this place and
I bought the house and land from my Dad who was getting in poor health."
   When she returned to teaching, she went to Plainview School when
Walter Powell was principal, followed by Henry Mims, Dan Lucius and
Bessie Lang. She went to Florien and taught in a "drop out' program.
She later taught at Ebarb School, where Roget Loupe was the principal.
   Mrs. Pugh attended the University of Houston from 1954 through 1956,
taking "How to teach Music, Reading and Arithmetic." She transferred to
Stephen F. Austin and earned her Master's Degree in Education.
   "I would have loved to continue going to school, but my children
were in college and that takes money," she said. "One son has a degree
in Industrial Arts, one in Agriculture and the girls are teachers.
   In conclusion, "You asked if I ever feel a little twinge when it's
time for school to start," she said. "Oh, YES! I can hardly stand not
to be going back. This retirement is for the birds. When I retired, I
knew my husband, a farmer, might outlive me, so I took retirement in a
way that would cover him if I should die first. I was not happy to
retire at 65, but then we had to. Now I am ninety years old and except
for a bad back, I'm still going strong. Oh, yes, I'd love to be back in
the class room."