Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
NOTES 1948
February and October

NOTES – 1948

“Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School”
February and October

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GALLERY: NOTES – 1948 February

[According to a survey of 197 Pine Mountain high school graduates] Twenty-five are now in colleges or vocational schools, some under the G.I. Bill. Thirteen are teachers … Of the boys who have stayed in this area, fourteen are farming, mining, trucking, or working in the lumber woods.

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TAGS: NOTES – 1948 FEBRUARY: graduation poem, graduates survey, Dillard Turner, Joan Ayers, Humanitarian Award, Baron Von Manneheim, Harriet Howard, teachers, one-room school, letters, seniors, class photographs

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TRANSCRIPTION: NOTES – 1948 February

P. 1

NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

PINE MOUNTAIN * HARLAN COUNTY * KENTUCKY

Volume XXI     FEBRUARY, 1948    Number II

Work makes men
And men make the nation.
Farmer, printer, and carpenter,
Each has its place in the nation—
Each has its place at Pine Mountain.
Twenty-two hours each week,
On the farm plowing and planting;
In this way we earn our bread and
In so doing, gain a new feeling of self-respect.
The ring of the axe biting into wood;
And the echoing thunder of the falling tree;
The rhythmic song of the saw
And the boom of the hammer on rock,
Hewing out foundation stones for our buildings;
The lowing of cows coming from pasture,
And the clank, clank, of the iron stanchions
Snapping into place;|
The thunder of the press,
Rolling out the monthly Pine Cone or the Notes—
These are sounds we know and love,
These tell the tasks we do.

A hand slow and clumsy
Works hard over a small block of wood
With tools new to the user.
Although what he first makes shows his lack of skill,
He is proud of his work,
But his ambitions and desires burn stronger.
Time goes on.
The dingy wood takes on a lustrous sheen
That reflects the smile of the worker.
As he gives it the final polishing.
Finished–
To the boy who once labored helplessly.
Almost hopelessly,
Comes the satisfaction and joy of creating
A thing of beauty and use.

Selections from a long poem written by the seniors of 1944 and presented at their graduation. The poem relates the many experiences of their life at Pine Mountain and is entitled, “How Beautiful are the Feet of Youth Upon the Mountain.“

P. 2

A SURVEY OF GRADUATES

Before 1932 Pine Mountain was primarily an elementary school. From 1923 to 1931 only 10 students completed a high school course and were graduated. Since Pine Mountain became a high school in 1932, 197 people have completed the 4-year course. Therefore when we speak of graduates, we do not include the many children who spent their early formative years here or those who attended high school for several years but were unable to finish. In an area where a high school education is difficult to get, finishing has been a real triumph for many. A survey recently made by some of the staff deals only with high school graduates and therefore cannot furnish a complete picture of what our former students are doing, but gives some indication.

Ninety-three of the 197 are still living in eastern Kentucky. Eighty-one are living elsewhere and 21 cannot be located. Two are dead.

Twenty-five graduates are now in colleges or vocational schools, some under the G. I. Bill. Thirteen are teaching. Fifty-three of the girls are married. Of the boys who have stayed in in this area, fourteen are farming, mining, trucking, or working in the lumber woods. The manager of Pine Mountain’s farm is himself a Pine Mountain graduate.

One man is manager of a Harlan wholesale house and three others are employed there. Nine graduates are secretaries. Five are factory workers.

In the field of medicine, too, graduates have made a record of which we are proud. More have gone into medical work than into any other single field. The two doctors are both in Kentucky, one in state public health work in Louisville and the other in private practice in a mountain county of eastern Kentucky. Five of our girls are in nurses’ training now. Fourteen are graduate nurses, and five have been trained as practical nurses. These girls had their first experience as nurse’s aides in the school’s small community hospital and were encouraged by our medical staff to take training because they showed an aptitude and liking for the work.

One graduate, Joan Ayers, has just returned from two years in Finland doing relief work with the American Friends’ Service Committee. She organized work camps for the rebuilding of northern Finnish towns. Campers were volunteers from Finland and many other countries. Since her return to this country Joan has been awarded the Humanitarian Medal by Baron Von Mannerheim of Finland.

*  *  *  *

Out of old letters we bring you stories of students of 20 years ago, and bring them up to date.

1927
Harriett came into the office the other day so happy with 25 dollars of her own to pay her whole year’s tuition. This is how she earned it: she has been working in our weaving room this past year and when she went home in the summer she got a loom for herself, and sat down and wove a coverlet which was sold in Chicago last week.

1948
Harriett Howard came to Pine Mountain as a small child and spent 8 years here. She learned to weave at the age of 8 and when she left was an expert weaver and knew many of the intricacies of vegetable dyeing. She finished high school and college at Berea, Kentucky. After several years teaching in other schools, she returned to Berea College to teach weaving and the allied arts of carding, spinning, and vegetable dyeing. She earned her Masters degree in Industrial Arts at George Peabody College. In 1945 she married J.Calvin Bright, also a Berea graduate, and they have gone to China, the childhood home of Mr. Bright who is the son of missionary parents. They will be located at Chengtu, West China. Harriett and her sister, Nora Howard Belle, who also made a splendid record as a student and employee of Berea…

P. 3

…College are two of the students to whom the training and ideal of Pine Mountain have been fundamentally important. They have brought us much honor.

_________________________

1925
We are thinking these first cold days of one of our boys who is teaching his home school  — in the poorest county in Kentucky. His building is equipped with a perfectly useless stove, and the other day he rode 20 miles to the county seat to labor with the superintendent for a new one. All the satisfaction he got was, “Well, I’ll do the best I can.” Dillard says, “I don’t know how I’m going to get it, but I’m going to have a stove, and I’m not going to close down school for the lack of one.”

1948
Our records do not say how Dillard Turner got his stove but we feel certain that he did, for his is a life of achievement. He worked his way through Louisville Medical School and is practicing medicine in the county seat of one of the least developed of Kentucky’s mountain counties. Working with him are two sisters who are graduate nurses and former Pine Mountain students. The waiting room of his well-equipped medical center seems always to be full of his neighbors who know and trust him. Dr. Turner has established a small maternity hospital which is meeting one of the most important health needs of his community.

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As we hear of the many fields of service which Pine Mountain students have chosen, we are reminded of the rich fulfillment in these 35 years, of Uncle William Creech‘s oft-quoted, and singularly prophetic words: ‘I don’t want hit to be a benefit just for this neighborhood,’ he said of the school ‘but for the whole state and the nation, and for the folks acrost the sea, if they can get any benefit out of hit.’

CHALLENGE

Boys and girls who have entered Pine Mountain during the last few years have shown in their placement tests the effect of the deterioration of elementary schooling because of shortage of teachers. In many sections people without any of the basic educational requirements have been granted temporary certificates so that schools may not be closed entirely.

Rare indeed are such schools as one county one-room school not far from us. The first impression is of order and interest. The room is attractive — with clean floors, desk in orderly rows, hangers on a low rack for the coats. Empty peanut butter jars — each with an owner’s label — stand beside a closed crock with a spigot which replaces the dented bucket and common dipper. Clean white curtains are decorated with paper pumpkins, hearts, or whatever the season suggests. The reading rack and the game table offer occupation for those who finish their lessons. Attractive pictures and charts are on all the walls.

Even before we meet the friendly teacher we have sensed her influence in all these things and in the alert boys and girls who are challenged to their best by her skill. A guest is always a class responsibility. One boy brings up pictures made by the sixth grade, an- other asks after a big brother at Pine Mountain, a girl leads the class in some of their favorite songs.

The glow we feel as we leave this happy place is mingled with regret that this creative atmosphere cannot be offered to every mountain child. In some places the situation is so bad that the parents most anxious to have their children learn, refuse to send them where they can accomplish nothing. Teachers with no qualifications sometimes sit all day and gossip with the children, never opening a book or hearing a lesson, making no effort to keep the school clean or to provide the most elementary education for their pupils. For them it is enough that they “keep school,” drawing pay for the mere fact of being present. This situation prevails in many rural communities, and is not confined to the mountains.

P. 4

Several years ago Pine Mountain agreed to help the county find suitable teachers for the five little schools near us. But though it is our dream that every boy and girl have a good basic education, it is not easy to find people with the interest and the training combined with willingness to isolate themselves and the courage to face the difficulties of their situation. We challenge each one of you to help us find the kind of teachers these schools need. If you know of people with the qualities this job needs, won’t you urge them to write us?

20 YEARS AGO

(In the November 1947 NOTES we printed stories found in letters of 20 years ago. Here are more of them.)

Last Sunday through the ground came galloping two horses. On the first one were two men riding double, and on the second, a girl wearing riding breeches and bright purple silk stockings. It was a bridal party riding from the wedding on Line Fork to the “infare” or wedding feast at the new home on Abner’s Branch fifteen miles away. At the dinner table the boys and girls were full of talk about it. “Well,” said Kirby, “ever-who I aim to marry has to brush her teeth every day.” “Why?” asked his housemother. Where upon another boy spoke up. “Why, don’t you know that a fellow that don’t brush his teeth ever day don’t do a lot of other things he ought to be a-doing?”

* * * *

A certain Mr. Saylor, aged about a hundred, who lives on the headwaters of the Kentucky River, had a visit from his son, aged 78. The two went out to the barn to feed the cattle, and the son started up the ladder to throw down the fodder. His tottering steps were restrained by his anxious father who said, “Now don’t you go up there. Let me go. You might fall.”

* * * *

Claude, is a new boy from a nearby mining town. He said the first day, “This is a pretty place; you don’t see no tin cans a-layin’ round. My pap said to me as we come in yesterday, ‘Son, pick up that tin can’, just to joke me, and that was the fust I’d noticed there warn’t none.”

* * * *

One big, red-headed fellow who was unspeakably shy the first of the year, has just unburdened himself to his housemother. “You know I was so homesick when I came that I used to stiffen in bed to keep from gettin’ up and putting on my clothes and slipping off home.” He is glad he fought it off now and is doing splendidly in school.

* * * *

Some current needs:
Hammers and other hand tools
Paper napkins for the dining room
Single bed blankets — new or used
Single bed sheets

Pine Mountain is a settlement school for mountain boys and girls of high school age. It is Christian but non-sectarian and is supported by individual gifts.

J. S. Crutchfield, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Chairman of Board of Trustees

E. S. Dabney, Lexington, Kentucky
Treasurer

H. R. S. Benjamin, Resident Director

Set up and printed by the students of the Pine Mountain Settlement School

P. 5 [Insert: See featured image above]

OUR LARGEST GRADUATING
CLASS

In May, we graduated 26 seniors, the largest class in the school’s history. Ten have gone on to colleges or training courses. Four of the girls have married, and one boy is in the army. The rest have returned to their home communities. Most of them have visited us in the months since graduation.

(Note: The girls are wearing dresses they made themselves as their last project in home economics class and flowers they gathered on the grounds.)

Pine Mountain Settlement School                                                         Pine Mountain, Kentucky

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GALLERY: NOTES – 1948 October

On [October] seventh, Mr. Dodd dedicated a piano concert to the memory of Mrs. Zande, one of our founders.

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TAGS: NOTES – 1948 OCTOBER: linoleum cut, John Spelman III, J. Calvin Bright, Nora Howard Belle, William Creech, calendars, needs, Rose Ellen Lewis, Mr. Napier, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Johnny Day, Mr, Henry Creech, Mr. William Hayes, Mr. Luigi Zande, Mr. Brit Wilder, Form of Bequest, stir-off,  Judge Lewis Lyttle, Creech Family, winter sports day, Mr. Arthur Dodd, piano concert, Society for Crippled Children

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TRANSCRIPTION: NOTES – 1948 October

P. 1

NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

PINE MOUNTAIN * HARLAN COUNTY * KENTUCKY

Volume XXII     OCTOBER, 1948    Number II

[Image: Linoleum print of log cabin with trees and mountains.]

The counselor, visiting each year’s applicants, has not the easy conveniences of street and house number to guide him. He has learned what questions to ask before starting, and these are incorporated in a Home Location form filled out by each prospective student. Picture him then, starting early on a June morning in the school jeep to visit Rose Ellen Lewis and perhaps six or eight others before nightfall. Rose Ellen’s home location form read in part:

What is the name of the highway street or creek on which your home is situated? “Axehandle”.

Can a car easily reach your home? “No”

If not, how far is it necessary to walk? “About two miles”

What kind of house is yours and…

P. 2

…what color is it? “Log, unpainted”

What other information can you give that would be helpful to someone looking for your house? “Directly in middle of a brick-sided house and another log house.”

With the problem of reaching his destination pretty well clarified, the counselor looked forward to a pleasant if somewhat tiring day. Near the gate he picked up neighbors and spent the first miles exchanging local news above the rattle of the jeep. The road down the creek grew rougher until it became one with the rocky, rutted creek bottom. The jeep had to travel so slowly that walking seemed faster — and certainly pleasanter.

Finally he reached a new road being constructed by a lumber company to take out timber. As he [approached] the big shovel which was biting away at a clay bank, he recognized the operator as Mr. Napier, father of Birdie, a Pine Mountain student. Bird- ie’s father turned off the motor and climbed down for a few minutes’ visit. Farther along where a pile of logs had tumbled down onto the road, there was another stop while the big ‘cat’, indispensible giant of the log woods, nosed and rolled them to one side.

The road was new, raw clay but wide and smooth, and a relief after the rocky creek.

On he went through the new mill town on Roan Fork with its neatly painted clapboard houses, school house, and commissary, and came at length, to the creek where Rose Ellen lived. He drove up Axehandle as far as the jeep could travel, passing a deep depression where a strip, or surface mine had removed the top soil and left erosion to do its worst. Beyond this he left the jeep and traveled on foot. The day grew warm but the path was a pleasant one between tall hemlocks and clumps of rhododendron. After half an hour he began to suspect that the “two miles” was a somewhat optimistic estimate since not even the brick-sided house had appeared. Finally it was passed and another ten minutes brought him to the unpainted log house. As he passed through the rickety gate Rose Ellen came around the house, dragging a coal bucket much too heavy for her slight frame.

She greeted him, her face shining with excitement. Mr. Lewis, sat on the porch. He welcomed the counselor and recounted in a matter-of-fact voice details of the mining accident which had crippled him and of his struggle to make a living from his little piece of land. Rose Ellen, in her skimpy, faded dress, spoke of her eagerness to attend Pine Mountain and asked to come at once to begin earning her tuition with summer work. “You’ll find she’s a good hand to work even if she don’t look much stout.” said her father. Promising that she might come the next week, the counselor departed, followed by Mr. Lewis’s hospitable, “You’d better stay the night.”

The sun was almost overhead when he reached the jeep. Retracing his way he stopped at the Napier home in the company town at Roan Fork. Birdie was busy caring for the many little brothers and sisters who tumbled happily about the house. She brought out clothes she was making for them and he praised her skill. Before he left the counselor completed arrangements for Birdie’s brother who wanted to come in the fall.

Approaching Johnny Day‘s home, the counselor noticed evidences of the cash which mining and lumbering have brought into remote parts of the mountains. Mr. Day works in the new mine on the other side of the ridge, starting off on the long walk at four every morning and returning after dark. The family enjoy the conveniences they are now able to buy, especially since REA power line has just reached them. Mrs. Day proudly displayed the new washer in its place on the porch, and the electric churn and radio.

A few more calls and it was time to turn home with a mind full of the impressions of the day. Everywhere were the needs of a pioneer culture, with its thin veneer of civilization. Running through the conversations of the parents were the same desires for…

P. 3

…[truncated] provided by poorly prepared teachers in tumble-down schoolhouses; recreation — to keep them out of trouble with the Law; training — to make something of themselves. And for most of them, miles from the nearest public high school the only hope was in such a school as Pine Mountain.

GLEANINGS

From the director’s monthly reports to the Board of Trustees

October….

Once again the Henry Creech family invited staff and students to a sorghum stir-off. The syrup was just right and some of us kept on dipping our cane stalks into the vat until we had a little more than was good for us!

We remembered the Creeches on the occasion of Uncle William [Creech]‘s birthday. Twenty-one of the family were present in response to our invitation. They sat together in front of the chapel. Judge Lewis Lyttle, sole survivor of the group who chose the site for the school was our speaker. Vespers was built around tales of the early days.

November….

The sophomore English class wrote and presented a dramatization of “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Don’t tell me these youngsters don’t have talent! We laughed till our sides ached. The audience was convulsed when Daniel paddled the devil till he begged for mercy.

February….

One glorious noon when the sun was shining on a ten-inch snow, I declared an afternoon off for winter sports. Workers and students were surprised and delighted. Everyone had a great time. The chapel hill became a bedlam of shouts, snowballing, sliding on ‘go-devils,’ sleds, and even wash basins, and rolling in the deep snow, Some took pictures, some washed the faces of their friends, and some just stood and enjoyed the fun.

On the seventh, Mr. [Arthur W.] Dodd dedicated a piano concert to the memory of Mrs. [Ethel de Long] Zande, one of our founders. He played Beethoven’s “Appassionata Sonata” with real feeling and fine interpretation.

May….

The ingenuity of Mr. [William] Hayes and Mr. [Brit] Wilder resulted in an efficient spray outfit. They put together an old 4 horsepower motor, spray nozzles, tubing, and a big wheel to fasten into the power take-off of the tractor, and built a platform for the tank. The outfit developed 100 pounds pressure and did a fine job. They sprayed the corn with 24D weed killer which is being used experimentally in many parts of the country. Their product saved us many dollars and served as an example to the students who helped them, that much can be done with what is at hand.

* * * * *

At dinner the day before vacation one boy said, “It’ll seem kinda funny now to go home and eat so different. Everything’s so nice here ‘n so quiet while we eat, I won’t know how to act with all the kids fussin’ and hollerin’.”

* * * * *

Ophie came to Pine Mountain the victim of a dreadful accident when she had tried to save her little sister from the wheels of a truck in the hands of a drunken driver. The little sister was killed and Ophie’s knee was shattered and not properly set, so that she was very lame. Our doctor set the wheels in motion and after eight months in the hospital in Louisville, Ophie came back with two legs equal in length and today she walks with only a slight limp.

When the question of what to do after graduation came up she said, “I sure would like to be a nurse. I want to do something to help folks in the mountains, but Miss [Grace M.] Rood (our nurse) says my leg wouldn’t stand up under the work. Maybe I could teach. I’d like to teach little children and show ’em the better things I’ve learned here, so they can grow up not drinking and quarreling all the time.”

P. 4

The Society for Crippled Children is providing Ophie with two years of college to help her on her way to a teaching career.

* * * * *

Little Ase needed special tutoring in English. He began to do better at once. One day when his tutor helped him understand some particularly difficult point he looked up with a quick grin and said, “Where’ve you been all my life? If I’d had you I mighta knowed sumpin’.”

1949 CALENDARS

The 1949 Calendars which contain 13 distinctive new photographs are ready for distribution. We are asking that you order your calendar, using the enclosed blank and the envelope, which does not require postage. Calendars will not be mailed to you this year unless you place an order for them. Orders can be filled immediately.

Current Needs

This summer we added seven rooms to West Wind dormitory for older girls. Will you help us furnish them? Furnishings for one double room are as follows;

1 double decker bed                $22.85
2 mattresses @ 11.95                23.90
2 chests of drawers @ 8.98
(unpainted wood)                       17.96
1 mirror                                          3.75
6 sheets @ 1.70
(unbleached sheeting)                10.20
4 Army surplus blankets
@ 5.75                                            23.00
_______________________________________
Total                                              101.66

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Form of Bequest

I give and bequeath to the Pine Mountain Settlement School, Inc. of Pine Mountain, Harlan County, Kentucky, a corporation created under the laws of the state of Kentucky, the sum of dollars for its corporate purposes.

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Pine Mountain is a settlement high school, Christian, but non-sectarian, for the boys and girls of mountain counties of southeastern Kentucky. It is supported by private contributions.

J. S. Crutchfield, Chairman of the Board
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

E. S. Dabney, Treasurer
Lexington, Kentucky

H. R. S. Benjamin, Resident Director

Set up and printed at Pine Mountain Settlement School

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NOTES – 1947
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NOTES – 1949

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COMMUNITY RESIDENTS 1910s – 1940s Guide

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