ONE ROOM SCHOOL...

From the Arvada Sentinel   April 30, 1981

Every August or September when I would compose the "Back to School" issue of the Nichols Family News (which I wrote for the family for 10 years), I looked in vain for a copy of this article.  I searched through folders, file drawers, boxes of stuff from Sweden, scraps of paper, and in places where it wouldn't be at all likely to be found.  And....I never found it.  The only thing I DID find in the back pages of one of my journals (1981) was a copy of the same picture published in an article about these kids in the Malmo newspaper while we were living there.

I think I during those yearly searches I found a copy of Ball Corporation's "Can Line" which was the house organ for Ball Metal Container Group.  Someone from the company had seen the above article and submitted it to Ball's publishing department.  I think I even won an honorable mention award for a "Human Interest" article, as pertaining to employees on temporary duty assignments.  I think those two items are still floating around somewhere down the basement.  May or may not find those some day either.

Anyway, I must have lamented to Brittany--and possibly several of the rest of the family, too--that I was unable to find this article.  So, imagine my surprise when I received this copy from Brittany on my 70th birthday.  She had gone through hoops, to  not only track down the Arvada Sentinel, but also wrangle a copy which she could give to me.  It was a copy of a copy from their newspaper archives, so parts of it were blurry.  I took it to the local copy store here in Johnstown to see if they could "clean up" some of the print.  I was told they needed the digital copy the newspaper sent Britty. 

She sent that to me.  I forwarded it to the print shop.  I got a beautiful PDF back with almost perfectly clean print.  But this stupid blog wouldn't accept a PDF format.  It had to be JPG, GIF, or PNG.  Whatever all the rest of that stuff is.  The copy store just sent it to me again, but this time the copy was in JPG form.  It is the same blurry copy as the one I got for my birthday--and totally unreadable here on this blog.  I am disappointed as I thought it might be fun to be able to read the article again now that nearly 36 years have passed.

So, get a magnifying glass and see if you can "read all about it!"

What you won't read in this article is that Harold, 11 years old and in the 5th grade, and Brice, 9 years old and in the 4th grade, would leave our house in Malmo while it was still dark with their bus passes around their necks and catch the bus down the street which took them to the center of town--Stor Torget--where they would change buses and finish their ride to the Swedish school.  Total travel time:  45 minutes including the transfer.  Then they did it all over again in the opposite direction when school was over, arriving home just before it got dark in the afternoon.  (Remember Malmo is on the same northern latitude as Anchorage, Alaska.)   I think that is pretty remarkable, but it was how all the kids got to school--public bus transportation.

Bottom line, it was a unique experience for Harold and Brice.  Burgandy was the only other school age child we had.  The company arranged for her to attend the BEST pre-school in the city, since Swedish kids don't go to school until they are fully six years old.  It was a challenge for her because they spoke NOTHING but Swedish at that school.  However, it turned out to be a pretty good thing.  Burgandy could probably understand as much or more Swedish than the rest of us.

BACK STORY:

When we arrived home from Sweden, there were still a couple of weeks left of school in Jefferson County School District.  I took the kids down to Stott Elementary to enroll them for that short time so they could get reacquainted with friends and reestablish themselves for possible summer play dates and fun.  After hearty "welcome home" wishes and curious questions about school  in Sweden, the secretaries quickly escorted Harold and Brice to their respective classrooms while I filled out the requisite enrollment forms.

However, before I finished with that task, there was a commotion in the hallway.  Mr. Cramer, the school principal, strode in and accosted me with an angry voice and demeanor.  "Get your children and go home, Mrs. Nichols.  We don't want them here.  They would only disrupt the activities planned for the last few days of the year."  I tried to explain my intent was only to give the kids an opportunity to reconnect without having to wait the whole summer for school to begin again.  That's when Mr. Cramer snarled how smart I thought I was bragging about my kids' experience in the newspaper!  Something along the lines of "little Miss Reporter".... 

I'll never forget how humiliated I felt! I was conscious of my cheeks becoming scarlet.  Burning tears threatened to fall as I turned and left to go get Harold and Brice.  The secretaries communicated their commiseration to me through their distressed facial expressions, but I was beyond being comforted at that point.  I only wanted to get out of the school--and never go back!  (Obviously, I must have.  The kids had to go to school in the fall for a few weeks before we left for New York.)

I had never felt like I was truly involved with what was going on at school anyway.  Just one of those parents on the outer fringes.  And that horrible scene pretty much sealed the deal that I was a peon--and the school was the ruler. (No pun intended!)  Mr. Cramer left the principal's position at Stott after a few more years--I don't remember just exactly when--but by the time we came back from Berlin there was a woman at the helm of Stott Elementary.  I heard later that Mr. Cramer had died of cancer.  He was probably in his 40's.  I think he might have been about the same era as I was. 

Funny how that experience affected me for so many years.  I still can't think of it without cringing.  While I have been trying to get this article in a print form so it could be uploaded to this blog, that whole experience--including the shame-- has flooded over me.  But for the life of me, I could NOT remember Mr. Cramer's name.  It took days of really concentrated thinking before I had that "AH HA!" moment one night when I woke up in the wee hours and couldn't sleep. 

James K. Cramer, Principal of Stott Elementary School.  Maybe he was having a bad day.  Maybe the cancer had already started, and he was in bad shape.  I don't know.  I only know what I thought was something newsworthy wasn't  newsworthy for somebody else.  Just goes to show, you never know what side of the line your efforts are going to land.