Where they “learned” me stuff
August 27, 2009 (Thursday)
I recall writing a series of blogs on houses I lived in while growing up (18 in all), and jobs I had through the years, but I can’t find a blog about the schools I attended. I know I wrote something about them somewhere – maybe it was in a letter to Santa Claus, I don’t know. But here goes.
All my public school education took place in Houston, Texas.
First Grade was in 1937 at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School, where I also attended Second Grade and Third Grade. That school is on Fulton Street just north of Loop 610 today. Back then in the 1930’s there was no Loop or Interstate, just Fulton Street, which became Montgomery Road at the railroad just north of the school. For a few weeks at the start of the Third Grade, I attended Breckenridge Elementary, where I met Troy Conner, who was to become my lifelong friend. We work together in our church today, at age 78. I attended Fourth Grade at Looscan Elementary on Robertson Street, just two doors down from our house. Our school room had three half-grades in one room. We ate lunch at tables set up in the hall. I recall they played a radio speech by Adolph Hitler during lunch one day. Must have been in 1940. I don’t know what that was about, but I remember he spoke in German and the short wave radio caused the applause to sound like the roar in a seashell, “waa, wohh.” Funny what we remember, isn’t it? When I entered the Fifth Grade, it was at Sherman Elementary on Lorraine Street, where I also attended Sixth Grade. Troy and I were reunited there. We next went to John Marshall Junior High, from the Seventh through the Ninth Grades. I commuted by bus across town all through the Ninth Grade. I had always intended to go to Jeff Davis High School, across the street from the Junior High, but my family had moved to a different part of town and I went to San Jacinto High School, where I graduated in 1949. After adjusting to the new situation, I enjoyed it a lot. I began college at East Texas Baptist, but illness forced me to leave that part of the state and start over at Baylor in Waco, where I got a B.A. in 1953. Then it was Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, in an on-again, off-again enrolment that I finally finished in 1959, with a B.D. degree, which later became M.Div. I recall mostly good times at all the schools, and am profoundly grateful for all my teachers and professors, without whom I could not have been prepared to follow God’s calling for my life.