NOTES – 1953

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
NOTES 1953
March

NOTES – 1953

“Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School”
March 1953

GALLERY

[Gladys Hill’s] period of service…longer than any other staff member including the founders …began under Miss Katherine Pettit in 1929 and encompassed every administrative era.

TAGS: NOTES – 1953 March, Gladys Hill obituary, cooperative store, Glyn Morris, Dr. Tracy Jones, medical service, West Wind, hospital, Creech Memorial Hospital Fund, drought, forest fires, snowstorm, Dorothy Nace 

 TRANSCRIPTION: NOTES – 1953 March

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NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

PINE MOUNTAIN * HARLAN COUNTY * KENTUCKY

Volume XXVII    MARCH, 1953    Number 1

[Small image of a flower print or drawing.]

It was scarcely a year ago that Gladys Hill, beloved beloved teacher and friend, slipped [quietly] away from us. Her going left an appalling gap, for twenty-three years . . . a full half of her life . . . was spent at Pine Mountain. Her death, by heart failure while she slept, brought the same shocked reaction from all her former students and co-workers. “I can’t imagine Pine Mountain without her!”

Her period of service . . . longer than any other staff member including the founders . . . began under Miss [Katherine] Pettit in 1929 and encompassed every administrative era. Because of this unique experience and her rare memory and perception we have all of us enjoyed her wonderful tales of the past.

One fellow worker wrote of . . . “that priceless gift which was hers . . . warm, vital, discerning descriptions of people and stories never-to-be-forgotten! I can see Miss Pettit as Gladys first saw her, and the girls with their ‘ten-minute jobs,’ and the father who came to fetch his homesick daughter because he ‘allus aimed to see his children satisfied.’ I can see the endless procession of students in and out of Gladys’ room, the equally endless procession of staff who came for strength or comfort of spirit or for pure fun. What a toll we all must have taken!”

Another wrote, “I don’t believe a person heard of her death who didn’t say, ‘What a loss for Pine Mountain!’ Everyone who came back to the school sought her first, not only for her warm welcome and the personal interest in his or her affairs, but for the news of all former classmates and teachers. She was really the heart of the school. Her wisdom, her sanity, and sense of humor at times of crisis, her warmth of heart beneath that quiet demeanor . . . a rare…

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…person. Death was kind to her in that quick release, without days of pain and suffering. She would never have borne being a care or burden to anyone.”

Miss Hill was born to teach. She had a personal, compassionate interest in all children which brought from them the best they were capable of. She held them to high standards of accomplishment and yet made learning a happy thing with her spontaneous gaiety which she did not discard at the classroom door. Her ‘field’ was mathematics. Yet she established . . . reluctantly at first . . . another feature of the curriculum which gained for Pine Mountain a national and even international reputation in educational circles.

During the administration of Glyn Morris she was in charge of selling school supplies and candy to the students. Mr. Morris suggested that she develop this into a student-operated cooperative store. She replied that she wasn’t interested and knew nothing of cooperatives, but compelled by his enthusiasm she read books and articles, visited cooperatives, and invited to Pine Mountain people active in the movement who could inform and inspire the children.

In the thirteen years that the cooperative was in operation it developed into a basic part of the curriculum. Students in their second year of high school became known as ‘coops’ rather than sophomores. All their studies related to the responsibility of organizing the student-owned cooperative store. Math, bookkeeping, and an understanding of economics were essential. History of cooperative was studied as well as information about choosing and buying food wisely. Cleaning, arranging, and clerking in the store were part of the experience of every coop class member. Assemblies helped to educate the rest of the school and each year the class presented important aspects of cooperation in a humorous, informative play. Books on cooperatives have carried accounts of what was done here and in 1941 the Harmon Foundation filmed the story under the title, “Let’s Cooperate.”

When, in 1949, the decision was made to change Pine Mountain from a boarding high school to an elementary day school, Gladys Hill chose to remain through the inevitable upheaval. She taught 5th and 6th grades and even though this complete change was particularly difficult for her to adjust to, she helped all of us through trying days and formed, both for new workers and the new student body, an important link with our past traditions and ideals. To returning students, bewildered by the many changes, she insisted, “It is different . . . yes . . . but it also is good!”

Her family and the school staff agreed that burial should be here where her whole life was. Glyn Morris, director of Pine Mountain from 1931 to 1942, flew from New York State to conduct the service in our chapel. The chancel was glorious with spring flowers as it so often was for Easter and graduation services. School children and neighbors gathered jonquils, forsythia, pear and peach blossoms. The stone altar was covered with green moss and clumps of arbutus, anemone, and hepaticas.

Miss Hill often made little nosegays of wild flowers for our girls when they graduated or were married in our chapel. One of these girls, a graduate, and bride, and now a member of the Pine Mountain staff, fashioned for her a nosegay which was placed in her hands. After the talk, in which we were vividly reminded of her as she lived and moved among us, her body was borne away by six men whom she taught . . . ranging from balding men to a boy not yet twenty. Her grave, dug by men from neighboring families,…

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…is on the crest of a knoll in a little garden near Laurel House. It is marked by a rough-hewn limestone boulder which a bronze plaque bears these words:

“GLADYS RANSON HILL
1906                         1952
 Teacher                 Friend”

and from Saint Paul the quotation, “I thank God upon every remembrance of you.”

Next morning early one of the boys from her class arrived with a box of flowers which he asked to plant around the grave. Miss Hill had admired them in his mother’s garden and he “wanted her to have them.”

Her going made a break . . . a gap in our life here which nothing can ever fill. Yet she is still very much with us. We remember her stories, her wisdom, her wit. We feel her with us as we celebrate the annual events which meant so much to her. It is as if she had just stepped out and we were about to hear her footstep on the stair or glimpse her slight figure before us on the path. Her body is committed to the elemental earth but daily we feel the presence of her living spirit.

* * * * *

For more than a year, Dr. Tracy Jones of Harlan town has directed our medical work. Dr. Jones, a native of this county, stepped in to help in the absence of a full-time resident doctor. At first he conducted three clinics a week and was on call for emergencies, but he has been giving increasing amounts of time to the service of this community. He moved with his family, a wife and three young daughters, to the campus in July. Our search continues for a nurse to complete our medical staff.

Extensive alterations are converting the former dormitory, West Wind, into an increasingly effective hospital. Laundry and kitchen facilities especially have been expanded. In 1945 when the hospital was housed in a cramped, inconvenient little building [Infirmary], a fund was established to build the Creech Memorial Hospital. This was done to honor the memory of William and Sally Creech when we celebrated the centennial of their births. The Creeches gave a large tract of land to establish the school and had a warm and vital interest in its progress. Four years after the fund was started, West Wind dormitory became available so it seemed wiser to improve this building than to attempt to build a new one. Part of the fund has been spent on alterations.

* * * * *

This has been a year of many crises! The summer drought, though not fatal to our crops, decreased our water supply to a precarious level for many weeks. Baths, laundry, and other uses were severely curtailed in order to preserve a little surplus against the ever-present threat of fire. In October we lived in the smoke from forest fires which stung our eyes and depressed our spirits. No fires reached our borders because men from the school went out to fight them before they got completely out of hand. No wastepaper or trash was burned, even in furnaces, lest flying sparks ignite the woods. Finally rains came . . . not torrents which would have washed away the powdery soil, but steady, gentle, penetrating showers which restored the parched earth.

Scarcely had we begun to breathe more easily than an early snow descended, soft and beautiful. So heavy and clinging was it, that it brought down trees and wires everywhere. After two days without power the deep-freeze units were loaded onto trucks and taken to town where a wholesale house allowed us to plug them in. The damage was so widespread that five…

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…days passed before power could be restored.

The road over the mountain was deep in snow and blocked by fallen trees. We could get to town by a road along the valley until a water-soaked hillside slid across it, blocking it completely. Several of us who left by that road had real adventures trying to get back.

School continued during these difficult days since the buses were still able to make the necessary rounds, but each night we groped about by unaccustomed lamplight and some houses had no heat but what came from their fireplaces.

For nearly two months we have been clearing away the broken branches and mutilated trees left by this one storm. Some have been cut into mining props to be sold to nearby coal mines and we have a large supply of fireplace wood. One large tree which blocked the road outside the gate will heat the brooder with its baby chicks. The flock is greatly enlarged this year. About 1600 chicks arrived in January and March.

* * * * *

Miss Dorothy Nace will be carrying the Pine Mountain story to church, school, and club groups in many places next winter. She is beginning plans for her trips now and would be happy to hear from you if you want her to come with her program of Kodachromes and mountain songs. Her aim is to meet old friends of the school and to find new ones. There is no charge for her services. The itinerary is tentatively as follows: October . . . Chicago and points in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio as requested: March . . . Louisville and central Kentucky: April . . . New York City and vicinity, New England.

___________________________

Pine Mountain Settlement School is a private institution affiliated with Berea College. It operates a community hospital; an experimental farm program; and, in cooperation with Harlan County, a consolidated elementary school. Pine Mountain is Christian but non-sectarian. Its support during the 40 years of its history has been derived from individual gifts.

Burton B. Rogers ————————- Director

See Also:
GLADYS HILL Staff, Trustee, Interim Director– Biography
MEDICAL
MEDICAL Guide

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