Reader response to recent columns

Reader response to some recent columns has been interesting, and I want to share some of their comments with you. Writers always wonder whether they are being read, and what their readers think, so please keep those cards and letters coming, folks!
Actually, it is mostly e-mails and personal contacts, but I would like to see more people respond to the Bulletin’s web page "blogs" at http://www.tryondailybulletin.com/blogs/.

My teacher friends identified with "That Carlann woman." The last paragraph was meant as a tribute to all the good teachers everywhere who are making a difference in so many young lives. I wish now that I had named them, but I wanted to get the column in the paper while it was timely. It is always better to let columns steep for a while because I often think of better ways to express things. It would have been good to say that this column is also for Uncle Mitch, Nancy, Bunny, Cindy, Janice and Dixie . . . not to mention my own teachers, all of whom I can name.

Carlann’s daughter Satasha put her comment on the Bulletin’s blog. Since many of you do not "do" the Internet, I quote her: "I am proud to see that others think That Carlann Woman is as wonderful as I [do]. As her daughter, I am perhaps the luckiest student of all. I was about 10 when she enrolled in Gardner-Webb. I went to class with her, tried to do my homework in the back of the room, quizzed her for tests on the way to Boiling Springs, and sometimes participated in class discussions. I am still realizing some of the lessons I learned from those years. I would have loved to have had a fourth grade teacher like that, but I got one better: I have That Carlann Woman as a life teacher!"

The comments about the WPA column were also interesting and varied. Bill Wuehrmann checked in with this: "I'm old enough to know, first hand, about WPA and CCC (my brother-in-law signed up) and I have one remaining vestige of the great work of WPA: An outhouse! Fay and I own a church (1855) in rural Wisconsin, but that's another story in itself that's too long to tell here. Anyway, it still has its WPA outhouse out back."

Helen Trevathan e-mailed this: "Really enjoyed reading this column. Chuck said his family probably wouldn't have made it thru without the WPA!" I am sure Chuck speaks for many who lived during the Great Depression.

In the small world category, Carlann Scherping sent this note: "That [WPA column] was fun to read. Martha and Allen [Ashley] are friends of mine. Martha and I did our graduate degrees at Gardner Webb together and, of course, we taught together at Saluda." And Madelyn Dedmondt Meyer (daughter of weatherman Robert) e-mailed from Brevard, "It's truly amazing what wonderful history you uncover in your endeavors. I never knew a home & spring-fed swimming pool was hiding in Saluda. It sounds like a treasure."

Friend Leroy Clarke, who grew up in Texas, but retired to New Mexico, e-mailed "It [WPA] was an amazing program, poor rural NM had its share of WPA projects too. We see lots of the work around here. I guess everyone over 60 still thinks of WPA and meaning "We Piddle Around". Silly that such a program had to live with that, as lots of folks were fed. (Being a Gov't program, there was, no doubt, lots of ‘piddle’)." However, friend Bob Isenhart, from the Midwest, sent this comment, "From the fine reporting in your article, it appears that the interpretation of ‘W-P-A’ being, ‘We Polk Along’ was entirely improper!" I think he meant "poke," as in "slowpoke," but he was probably playing with the name of our county.

The historians tell us that it was WWII, not the WPA, that finally brought us out of the Great Depression. Be that as it may, we still have the enduring rockwork, some buildings, and the wonderful Blue Ridge Parkway to enjoy. Pretty good legacy, I say.

Works Progress Administration in Polk County

John Vining suggested that I write about the CCC boys that he thought had built the rock walls around Stearns Park in Columbus. In making inquiries, I discovered that the walls were built by the WPA men and that the late Robert Dedmondt had served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, so I interviewed my friend Robert and wrote a long piece about him and his adventures in the CCC camps (TDB, February 27, 2004).
The Works Progress Administration (WPA), renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939, was established in 1935 by executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Created during the Depression when unemployment was widespread, the WPA was designed to increase the purchasing power of persons on relief by employing them on useful projects. WPA employed a total of 8.5 million persons (about 3.5 million at its peak) and its total cost was nearly $11 billion. WPA built some 116,000 buildings, 78,000 bridges, 651,000 miles of road (including the Blue Ridge Parkway) and improved some 800 airports.
When I went to Tryon School there was a sign proclaiming that the gymnasium was built by the WPA about 1938. I wrote about its demolition (TBD, September 8, 2006) and heard from Allen Ashley of Saluda that his father, William C. Ashley, had been supervisor of all WPA work in Polk County. I finally interviewed Allen to learn what else in Our Area was built by the WPA men.
The list is imposing, and is probably not complete, because some of their rock work has been covered over with fill dirt to allow new uses of the land. Besides the Tryon gym, WPA crews built the rock walls around Stearns park, the Stearns gym, the rock school at Saluda, a sanitary sewer line under Mills Street in Columbus, and the Mill Spring school.
The sewer line is so deep under Mills Street that the workmen dug wells at intervals and tunneled between them to lay the pipe. It goes down the center of the street. At Mill Spring, they built an addition to the school, the older part then burned, and they rebuilt that as well.
Allen Ashley went to work for his father in the commercial construction business as soon as he graduated from Saluda High School in the same class with his wife to be, Martha. They inherited the century-old house they have turned into a wonderful dream home for themselves and Allen’s museum-quality rock collection. The front porch extends across the full width of the large house, and is sheltered from the street by mature boxwoods.
We sat on the back porch overlooking their gardens and spring-fed swimming pool, cool and comfortable at noon, for this interview. There are a flower garden, a vegetable garden and a rock garden. The latter is really a 20-foot square depository for rocks Allen brings home that he has not yet cut or polished for his museum. A pole with two birdhouses is placed by the rock collection, for the roof of the upper birdhouse, gift of a friend, has the ubiquitous plea to "See Rock City."
A mom, dad, and two small children appeared at the pool, waving a greeting to us as they sat at the picnic table until the kids swooped into the pool. All are welcome to use the pool, but after many teenagers created disturbances, the new rule is children must be accompanied by their parents. It works! There is a finely-ground quartz crystal "beach" that is so dazzling white that it looks like a snow bank, even in June. At the mention of quartz, I suggested that we go up and see the rock museum.
I was not prepared for the variety and beauty of the sizeable display. The colors are a feast for the eyes, especially the ones that come to life only under ultraviolet light. There are three rooms of specimens, many of them incredibly spectacular in formation or color or both. I told Allen I have to return soon, with wife Fran and my camera. Yes!

That Carlann woman done took off her teacher hat

My friend Carlann Scherping taught fourth graders at Saluda School for all the years I have known her. I became acquainted with her when she helped us write a grant request for the Polk County Historical Association about 1997. The Polk County Community Foundation awarded the grant, and the Association acquired a computer, an e-mail address, web page, and a paid data entry person to catalog everything in the museum. Carlann wrote the lesson guide for the annual visits by students to the museum, and her students designed the web page and put it up on the Internet!
I praised her in our PCHA Newsletter and verbally at her wedding, saying that "For children who are fortunate enough to have Carlann for fourth grade, it won’t matter what happens after that, because they will have learned enough to be successful in all that they ever try to do." There is more truth than poetry in that, as Mama Rippy used to say.
Carlann was always taking her students out of the classroom on field trips. These outings were reported in the local press, and I would e-mail Carlann right away: "I see by the papers where that Carlann woman done took them kids out of school AGIN, and wore them out on some eddy-kay-shun-ul opry-toonity. Them little heads must be crammed plum full of knowledge by now!"
One regular field trip was to the North Carolina coast: they sailed on a Duke research vessel and spent time out in the salt marsh with marine biologists. Each year she had her class publish a book about some aspect of life in Saluda, originally to help pay for the field trips. For the first of these class book projects, she asked her students to interview residents who were "old" so they could learn about the past. They came back with stories by 30-year-olds, so she then advised them to talk to people more than 60 years old!
Carlann’s fourth graders videotape the interviews, write the stories, design the book’s pages, scan old photographs, process digital pictures, get the books printed, and sell them to the public. I know college graduates who are intimidated by having to write a report, or even their memoirs for the grandkids! Obviously, Carlann was not one of their teachers.
Carlann was a teachers’ assistant in the early 80s when Lib Ormand and the late Lib Correll began to suggest that she obtain a teaching certificate. Carlann resisted, and Lib Ormand persisted, until one day Carlann protested that she would be 35 years old by the time she completed the degree. Lib just laughed and said, "Child, you are going to be 35 anyway, why not have a degree?"
So Carlann began classes at Gardner-Webb that lead to her getting not only the BS degree but an MA as well. Then Nancy Wilson of the Central Office told her of a new thing that she thought Carlann should go for, and Carlann became one of the first 525 teachers in the nation to have National Board Certification as a Middle Childhood generalist.
Then the awards for her work began to come in. They are numerous and prestigious, believe me. I am glad that I am just one of many persons who recognize the value of Carlann’s special ways of inspiring children to learn and to do.
So you see, Carlann has the credentials and the peer recognition appropriate for her teaching career. But I think that for Carlann, the essence of her life among her fourth graders is found in watching them grow and develop, not only while entrusted to her, but for years after as they fulfil my prophecy for them.
Thank you, Carlann.
Yes, that "Carlann woman done took off her teacher hat," and put it away with her other trophies, I guess. I was tempted to write that this is the end of an era for Saluda School, but I have to think that is not so, for even now another dedicated teacher is preparing to lift some fourth graders to new levels of understanding and ability.