Tag: Haldeman Elementary School

In Memory of…

When I was a kid I lived in Eastern Kentucky for five years. Second grade through sixth grade. Second through fifth I attended Haldeman Elementary School. It was small. The building used to be a high school and my father or my uncle (I can’t remember the lore) had attended school there during one of the furloughs when their family was home from the mission field for a year. 

Haldeman was a small community school, close-knit. There was only one classroom per grade and for a lot of the kids, their parents had gone to school together too. My dad had stories about Mr. Knipp (the principal and 5th grade teacher) when they were teenagers. Mr Knipp lived in our same holler, and when we were not at school, he was Uncle Sandy. He looked after me and my brother in the same way that he looked after a whole host of nieces and nephews and “kin” who also attended the school. 

I was with the same group of kids, with a new kid added on here and there, every year, from second grade through fifth grade (I was gone for fourth grade, but when I came back, nothing had changed). 

In third grade it was decided by someone (my teacher, my parents?) that I needed speech therapy. Once a week a speech therapist would come to the school and she would come stand outside Ms Rigsby’s classroom door and I and another boy, Damon, would get up quietly and walk out with her. We met in a small little classroom that had been added on to a corner of the cafeteria. I loved going to speech. The speech therapist was a beautiful younger woman with long, long, straight hair that went  past her waist. She always wore long flowy skirts and I remember that she smiled a lot and was gentle and kind. 

Damon and I would sit down at a little table and she would pull out boxes full of little cards. Some had the alphabet written on them, some had sentences to read aloud. Some had pictures. I was there to work on my “s” sound. I remember her telling me, showing me with her own mouth, how my tongue wasn’t supposed to go past my teeth when I made the “s” sound. It felt so weird and unnatural, but I would try again and again. (Now I sit here at my computer and whisper to myself words with S to see if I still stick my tongue past my teeth, I don’t think I do, so maybe the therapy worked?) . 

Damon wore hearing aids and had a stutter. I found this fascinating as he was the first person I had ever met my own age that wore hearing aids. And stuttered. These were all new things to me. His stutter really wasn’t bad. I don’t remember it stopping him from talking, it was just there in the background. And despite the fact that this was the 80s and culturally, we hadn’t all learned how to be kind and accepting to people who are different, I don’t remember his hearing aids and stutter affecting his social status in the classroom. Damon was a cute kid. Fun. He had lots of friends. I felt a little privileged that I got to go and do something with just Damon and no one else. 

As we got older Damon joined the ranks of the popular kids and I didn’t have a lot to do with him. But, he stayed kind. There was a group of boys who would tease me about my name and just generally be awkward annoying boys. Damon never did that. He always said hi and didn’t act like he didn’t know me, as some of the more popular kids did. 

In 6th grade we all moved up to the Middle School in town. All the small elementary schools scattered around the county all sent their kids to the same school. It was big. Crowded. I think we had eight classrooms per grade. I only had two other kids from Haldeman in my homeroom class and I rarely saw my old classmates. I honestly have no good memories of that school. Lots of bullying, cliques, kids coupling up, name brand clothes suddenly became important, rumors of other kids going to parties and drinking. It was a bizarre step from childhood innocence to a world of sex, drinking, and your worth being graded on how expensive your clothes were. I did have one English teacher who noticed my love of books and she kept me steadily supplied with new books to read all year round. That’s my only good memory. 

And then, sometime in the winter of that 6th grade year, while I was home in our cozy trailer, my friend Leah was over, and she got a phone call. She came into my bedroom after getting off the phone, her face was white and she said, “Damon’s dead.” He had committed suicide. And whatever remnants of childhood innocence that had still tried to cling to us, left. 

I remember trying to find black clothing to wear to the funeral. The horror of the funeral with his body laid out in a casket. Rows of children in the funeral home, weeping. Going back to school after the funeral and just sitting at my desk crying. A counselor went around all the classrooms and gathered up whatever children seemed to be doing the worst, and she grabbed me, and we all went into a room together. One of my old Haldeman classmates, a good friend of Damon’s, Brad, came up and gave me a big hug. I hadn’t said more than a handful of words to Brad since we moved up to the Middle School, but at that moment, he felt like family.  

I went home after school and laid down on my bed and fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, sometime around supper, I felt fragile. Breakable. The world was different. I was different. 

Damon was not a close friend. But he was part of my community. He was a presence of kindness in my life. He lives in my memories. And I’m glad that I was one of those privileged to know him. 

I just went and looked and found that there is a memorial page for Damon online. Michael Damon Rivers (1977-1990). If any old Haldeman friends want to go add a memory about Damon to the page they can. 

Bookworm

Most of you probably know that I am a bookworm. In all senses of the word. I remember it really started in second grade. The library at the old Haldeman Elementary School in Eastern Kentucky was dark paneled, high ceilened, musty smelling, and had wonderful tall bookshelves full of old dusty books. I found a section of books called historical fiction which I had never encountered before. I found books about Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington. All of them written in story form. Long chapter books. I was hooked. 

After that I always had a book with me. I would hide it in my desk and when I finished my work before everyone else, I would pull my book out and read. I would also hide it in my lap, and if the teacher was being especially boring, I would surreptitiously glance at the book in my lap. I remember being caught every once in a while. But not often. 

By sixth grade, I was averaging a book a day. Not short books either. I remember that Little Women took me two days. It was so long! It was about that time that my English teachers started supplying me with books. Have you tried this one? Here, you should read this! When we were overseas in Haiti, with no library available, I would borrow from anyone I knew with books. And fortunately, we had a lot of book-reading friends. 

I was indiscriminate in my choice of reading. I read some really good books. I read some really bad books. I read some books that have stayed in my memory and the good things I learned from them have stayed with me for a lifetime. I’ve read some books where I still have a lingering sense of guilt that I actually read such trash. 

When I started struggling with anxiety, I had to take a break from reading. I found that books too easily messed with my emotions and when I was feeling fragile, I couldn’t risk letting a book tip me into anxiety again. 

When I struggled with depression, I found the same thing. Books became something I had to be cautious with. And this is when I started just reading fluff books. Or re-reading old books that I knew were calm and peaceful. Kind of like watching silly sticoms instead of watching artsy films from film festivals. Every once in a while I would slip up and read something new, that looked pretty innocent, and then it would take me down an unexpected path of self-awareness on issues I didn’t feel like being self-aware of. One book series I accidentally picked up, managed to jump up and down on all my old wounds and I ended up having to do a lot of soul-searching, talking, therapy, prayer, etc before I recovered from that. (Though I do not regret it. I came out the other side, a much healthier person.)

All of this to say, I am rather careful about what I read these days. Which makes my decision, this past week, to get a book from the library, rather surprising. I went to the library with only one child, and I actually spent time perusing the shelves and finding something that looked enjoyable. I thought I was up to reading something new. I ended up reading A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr. Very good book. Very depressing book. Very uplifting book (but only if you really think about it and analyse it a bit). It took me two days to read, and by the end I was waving my kids away, Just a minute! I’m on the last chapter! Hold on a second! And then I read the last line, slammed the book down and stomped off. Mad at myself for getting all emotionally involved in a book again. Unable to stop thinking about it. 

And then, during our bible study this morning, I found myself thinking about the book again, and realizing that the author was pretty in tune with the book of Romans. And I was glad that I had read the book. Even though it took me a couple days to really process it. In a nutshell the book is about the unrelenting sinfulness of man and the unrelenting hope of the cross. If you are up for an emotional roller coaster, I would highly recommend it. 

I am now comforting myself with Venetia by Georgette Heyer. A book I have read before, a most wonderful piece of amusing, clean fluff. (As long as you can overlook the latent sexism that seeps through any romance written in the 50s.)

My end conclusion is, reading is dangerous, proceed with caution. But it’s also stimulating, exciting, and can lead you on amazing adventures of learning and growth. Also proceed with caution. I know that reading has shaped me, good and bad, into who I am today. And I will always proudly wear the title of Bookworm.