Cape Girardeau History and Photos
News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
Wife Lila is gradually making more room in the West Palm Beach house by shipping stuff up to me in Cape (where it originally came from). Today’s box contained the 1960 Trinity Lutheran School Yearbook.
I was a nerdy 7th grader in those days, a look I managed to carry with me throughout life.
I won’t spend a lot of time on descriptions. Stroll through the gallery by clicking any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.
Just to show you how your permanent record can come back to haunt you, here is a note I found stuffed away between the pages of a book. I was captain of the Trinity Lutheran School Safety Patrol in the eighth grade.
Mr. Mueller, the eighth grade teacher, was also advisor to the safety patrol. He evidently caught two of my patrolmen leaving their post three minutes early (with an exclamation point, no less). He wanted me to mark them down for five demerits each.
At this late date, it’s really not worth it to add to their shame by publishing their last names, but they DO appear in this photo.
Here are other school safety patrol stories and photos:
I mentioned yesterday the struggle Kid Matt and I were engaged in to get my computer upgraded. Well, in roughly eight hours, the data will be copied from the old box to the new one. While that’s going on, I have limited access to my photo library. To bridge the gap, I did a quick scan of the 1954-1955 Trinity Lutheran School Second Grade class. Click on the photo to make it larger.
One face surprises me. I could have sworn that Miss Gade was our second grade teacher, and I would have sworn that she was a severe, old maid school marm who would never have smiled like the woman at the top left. Maybe we had a substiture teacher on photo day.
I recognize a lot of faces, but I always hate to guess on the spellings (and I hate to leave anybody out), so I’m going with first names and I’m not going to match them up with the photo in all cases.
I see a Ronald, Della, David, Patti, David, Patricia, Judy, John, Bonnie, Jerry, Cheri, James, Nancy, Terry, Mickey, Mike, Donald, Mike and Don, among others. I WILL call out a special apology to David Blattner, at the far left in Row 2 from the top. He really didn’t have freckles. The photo just has more spots than I could take out. Oh, yes, there’s a Ken in there, too, but he was Kenny in those days.
There are stories behind those sweet mug shots of grade school kids. Check out Picture Day at Hollister School in Ohio if you don’t believe me. This is a sample.
Buried in a box of old newspaper clips that are crumbling bad enough that I’ve been sneezing all afternoon was my first grade Reading Race Prize.
Mrs. Kelpe, the first grade teacher every kid should have, wrote on the back, “To Kenneth, who was once again the winner of the Reading Race. I am proud of you, Kenneth.” It was dated March 25, 1954, the day after my birthday.
My first grade scrapbook has this photo of me wearing the prize for winning an earlier Reading race.
Dad’s typewriter didn’t have a spellchecker on it, so some typos crept in from time to time. The fact that he and Mother went to all the trouble to document my young life is much appreciated. As Kid Rel II, Brother David’s scrapbook was a lot shorter. Brother Rel III Mark’s book simply said, “Refer to earlier editions.”
“…Mrs. Kelpe timed up on readying (sic) today and had a prize for the fastest ones. I won as my time was only 1-1/2 minutes. It took one boy 6 minutes. The prize was a white sailer hat. A little bit [big] but I like it. Boy! I was good to win that hat. [OK, so I needed to work on humility.] I told Mrs. Kelpe she was the best teacher I ever had and I’ve had a plenty.“