NOTES – 1950

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
NOTES 1950
November

NOTES – 1950

“Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School”
November

GALLERY

A gift which is a real boon to the medical staff is a large X-ray unit presented to Pine Mountain this summer by Dr. J. B. Lukens of Louisville.

TAGS: NOTES – 1950 NOVEMBER: Burton B. Rogers, Henry Creech, Gladys Hill,  Grace Rood, music, education, medicine, work camp, American Friends Service Committee, Chapel, Schoolhouse, outhouses, plumbing, Golda Pensol Baker, music appreciation, Young People’s Record Club, Carnegie grant, hay drier, Dr. and Mrs. Gordon Brown, Dr. Elizabeth Henderson, X-ray unit, Dr. J.B. Lukens, hospital fund, Creech brothers, health services, calendar, Dorothy Nace, fundraising, Form of Bequest

TRANSCRIPTION: NOTES – 1950 November

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NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

PINE MOUNTAIN * HARLAN COUNTY * KENTUCKY

Volume XXV     NOVEMBER, 1950    Number 1

[Small image of a drawing or print of holly with berries.]

Pine Mountain had a lively summer. In June three church conferences used our grounds. After they departed seventeen young people arrived for two months of working and playing together. These high school age boys and girls with their staff of five adults moved into the old hospital and spent eight weeks working for Pine Mountain.

They were members of a work camp sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and, in the work camp tradition, they paid their own maintenance and gave their labor to fill our need. Most of them came from big cities … Chicago, Cleveland, New York. They had had the advantages of good private schools and foreign travel. But in spite of many differences they were welcomed and accepted… especially by the young people of the neighborhood.

They had three major work projects. They erected a primitive but effective scaffolding and put a new roof on the Chapel … its first in all its 28 years. They painted the outside of Laurel House. Constant rain slowed up both these jobs. The third was installing toilets at the Schoolhouse. The School building was the last building to have outhouses. The campers tore them down and leveled off the ground. They dug a large hole for the septic tank and ditches for the pipes. Putting in the pipes under the floor was an unpleasant job. The Schoolhouse has no basement and the narrow space between floor and ground was dark and damp.

Rain kept interrupting the outdoor work … whole days of rain or unexpected showers that sent campers scurrying to cover exposed parts of the roof. There were long delays waiting for supplies, and there was the problem of clean clothes for of course with the dampness the laundry hung limp for days. There was the inevitable summer camp series of poison ivy and sprains and cuts, but with the blitheness of youth they took it all.

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Saturday night folk dancing received a tremendous boost from their enthusiastic participation. Although with their busy schedule there were not enough opportunities to get out and visit with neighbors, many campers went to Sunday services or midweek prayer meetings. Toward the end of their two months they invited everyone for miles around to a community party planned for the enjoyment of old and young.

In order to know this part of the country better the campers took trips on the school truck to visit a coal mine at Benham and a sawmill across the mountain at Putney. It was a mournful crowd of campers who climbed on the back of the truck for their last trip across the mountain … and it was a quiet campus when they were gone.

* * * * *

It was not quiet long. Three days after the work campers departed, school opened. Opening day was a great contrast to the first day of last year. Older pupils were able to help the new ones learn our ways. Everyone was much impressed by the evidence of the work camp activities … especially, of course, the Schoolhouse plumbing which was something new to most of them.

For two weeks the children brought their lunches and picnicked out-of-doors with their teachers. By the time hot lunches were begun there was great impatience for them. And such enthusiasm as was displayed! Teachers, remembering the devices used to persuade children to try new foods … posters, movies, health talks, contests … smiled to see the way plates were cleaned off. Even first graders ate as if inspired. When more than 150 children had eaten the first day there wasn’t enough food scraped from their plates to have satisfied a moderately hungry pig.

* * * * *

The fourth and fifth graders of Miss Pensol’s class have been head-over-heels in music since school began. Miss Pensol planned a music appreciation unit which involves everything else … reading, English, spelling, and even arithmetic. As a result of daily listening sessions the children can recognize many different instruments and a variety of compositions. One of the staff children has a subscription to the Young People’s Record Club and these records are used extensively along with records from the school’s symphonic record library … a Carnegie grant.

The class made a trip over the mountain to Harlan in a school bus to visit the music store. There they saw and heard many instruments. Especially impressive was the Hammond organ. “I’m aimin’ to buy me one of them Hammonds, soon as I can get the money saved!” one boy said. He was the same enthusiast who remarked five minutes after arrival, “If we was to go home right now it would be worth the trip!”

Preparation of a simple dramatic version of Hansel and Gretel has absorbed a good deal of time. After this performance the class wants to give a puppet show based on Peter and the Wolf. They are looking forward to the visit of the Lynch High School band which has promised to make the 60-mile round trip to give a concert for the whole school.

Greatly as they enjoy the new kinds of music, some of them adhere fondly to the familiar “hill-billy” songs. After listening to “Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” little Sudie said sympathetically, “If you ain’t got no better records than that, Miss Pensol, I’ll bring you some real pretty ones, ‘Bury Me Beneath the Willow” and ‘Mother Isn’t Dead, She’s Only Sleeping.'”

Raised with the austere idea that school work must be hard and unpleasant, the children don’t realize how much they are learning. After two weeks of school Billy Joe asked, “But when are we fixin’ to do some lessons?”

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Materials which would enrich this unit:
Children’s records, Children’s books on the opera and symphony, Children’s biographies of the composers, Rhythm band instruments.

* * * * *

It rained and it rained and it rained! All summer the rain made farm work difficult. Plowing and planting, cultivating and harvest … all were delayed or rendered impossible. Fields were drowned out and had to be replanted. Corn grew up in weeds that almost choked it out because the ground was too wet to cultivate. The men on the farm did build one piece of equipment which beat the weather. They constructed a barnloft hay drier, using an old electric motor and odds and ends of lumber. We soon grew accustomed to the steady day-and-night hum of this ingenious device which could be heard far up the valley. It saved cuttings of fine hay from ruining completely in the field.

* * * * *

Early in August Dr. and Mrs. Gordon Brown and their two small daughters were added to our Pine Mountain family. Dr. Brown has come to replace Dr. Elizabeth Henderson who resigned in May. He studied medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and recently completed his [internship] at the San Diego Naval Hospital in California. Dr. Brown is making a firm place for himself in this community, re-establishing the clinics started by Dr. Henderson and taking active part in Sunday School and church activities in nearby communities. He is greatly interested in the Pine Mountain Hospital and is making plans to expand its services in several ways.

A gift which is a real boon to the medical staff is a large X-ray unit presented to Pine Mountain this summer by Dr. J. B. Lukens of Louis- ville. The cost of shipping and installing this delicate piece of equipment was covered by a fund given by our neighbors. Almost $650.00 was raised to send a van from Harlan to Louisville for the unit and to pay two X-ray technicians to install it.

* * * * *

How this fund was raised is a story in itself. Last Christmas a special letter to members of our Advisory Board suggested that each one ‘find a new friend for Pine Mountain.’ Henry Creech, one of our local advisors, approached a man who has several children in Pine Mountain School and whose family uses the hospital. Although he was not working because of the coal strike, the man responded with a gift of two dollars, Others, overhearing the conversation, offered to make gifts, and soon it appeared that enough people were willing to do something for Pine Mountain that an organized drive could be made.

Since the hospital is used by the largest number of people, it was decided that a special hospital fund would be raised and a committee with members on different creeks was appointed. Two of Uncle William‘s sons, Columbus Creech and William Jr. canvassed two lumber camps, trying, in a spirit of friendly rivalry, to see who could raise the larger amount. The appeal was made during the coal strike and at a time when one lumber camp had been closed for six weeks so that many families were without their regular income. In the face of this the size and number of the gifts was thrilling. It was proof [positive] that the people who benefit by our medical service do appreciate the Pine Mountain Hospital and want to have their part in it.

A few hospital needs:
Baby clothes (to fit newborn babies), An electro-cardiograph.

* * * * *

The medical program is expanding its service to fill a need which was very…

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…evident last year. Miss [Grace M.] Rood who has been at Pine Mountain for twelve years has been released from hospital duty to carry out a program of school and public health. Each child in the school is receiving a physical examination which includes a blood test, eye check, and hookworm examination. Where corrective treatment is needed, ways will be worked out to provide it. Miss Rood keeps an eye on the children as they arrive each day to find those who may be taking sick and to treat small injuries. Monthly weighings will help impress the children with the relation of good food and good health to growth.

The fifth and sixth graders in Miss [Gladys] Hill‘s class as part of their health unit are learning how to help with the weighing and measuring. They are much interested in seeing a hook worm specimen under the microscope.

Miss Rood has visited every home in the school district … a prodigious undertaking with so scattered a population, for she had no car. She has worked to keep a measles epidemic within bounds by keeping children out of school who have been exposed. Of course home visits include a good deal of incidental teaching for better family health.

At the community fair Miss Rood had her customary booth and gave free typhoid shots to many people who have gotten the habit of getting their annual booster shot at that time. Later she had a roadside clinic outside Big Laurel post office at mail time to give shots to people who missed the Fair.

Miss Rood can use:
Medicine cabinet with lock, Bandages, fine tooth combs, Four-drawer file cabinet, Fund for applicators, gauze, etc.

* * * * *

The Pine Mountain Calendar for 1951 is a scenic one, containing twelve views of the mountains in different seasons. An order blank and return envelope are included with this mailing of the Notes for your convenience in ordering this little wall calendar. It makes an attractive and unusual gift for your Christmas giving.

* * * * *

Miss Dorothy Nace is traveling about telling the story of Pine Mountain. She has a set of colorful Kodachrome slides which make her story more vivid. After Christmas she plans in one northern trip to visit Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Muncie. Later she is visiting Louisville, Lexington, Frankfort and other points in Kentucky.

Miss Nace has prepared a set of 40 slides for lending to groups which she cannot visit personally. These slides have with them a manuscript which tells their story. They are available without any charge but return postage. If you are interested in having a Pine Mountain speaker at your club or small home gathering, or if you would like to borrow the slides, Miss Nace will be pleased to hear from you.

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Form of Bequest: I give and bequeath to the Pine Mountain Settle- meet 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.

_________________________________

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 37 years of its history has been derived from individual gifts.

Burton B. Rogers ———————- Director

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NOTES – 1949
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NOTES – 1951

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EDUCATION
MEDICAL
Medical GUIDE

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