Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PMSS Publications (Published by the School)

Dear Friend Letters 1938

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 CONTENTS: Dear Friend Letters 1938, March 20 – Pages 1 – 2

Dear Friend Letters 1938 consists of one 2-page letter that includes the following subjects:

Letterhead lists names of director and treasurer ; letter describes how young PMSS girls are helping the community: assisting the dentist, giving lessons, distributing books and magazines, organizing dental and tonsil clinics, assisting the nurse ; explains how the girls are good representatives for the School ; describes ways that the students are trained through work ; asks if PMSS’s program is worthy of a donation ; signed by Glyn A. Morris ; shows amount of money needed by School ;

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GALLERY: Dear Friend Letters 1938

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TRANSCRIPTION: Dear Friend Letters 1938

Page 1 [dear_friends_1938_03_001.jpg]

PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, INC.
PINE MOUNTAIN * HARLAN COUNTY * KENTUCKY

Director
GLYN A. MORRIS

Treasurer
C. N. MANNING
Lexington, Ky.

March 20, 1938

Dear Friend:

When I stood recently by the bedside of a young mother dying of pneumonia and watched two of our Pine Mountain girls assist the nurse in holding life as long as possible, and when only last week I watched two other girls skillfully assist, as they do regularly, a visiting dentist at our bi-weekly dental clinic, I breathed a prayer of gratitude for such youngsters. Still in their teens, they share in the tasks generally assumed only by adults, and because they have lived close to unpolished life, they meet its demands naturally, with poise, and with the spirit of the pioneer. They command our deepest admiration.

Our Pine Mountain girls bring joy to lonely places. One little boy, crippled from birth, trudges once each week over the steep trail from Gabe’s Branch to Laurel, a journey for him of three hours, for the short lesson in handicraft given by one of the five Pine Mountain girls who help ease the crowded “book larnin'” day in four county schools nearby. The girls come to gladden the hearts of over a hundred children for whom childhood ceases almost as soon as it begins, when too early they must bear their share in wrestling a living from worn out hillsides.

This group of girls, whose work began last year, has circulated hundreds of books and magazines; organized four large dental clinics and one tonsil clinic; been of inestimable value to the nurse during months when it was physically impossible for her to call on but a few of the sick in far off hollows. They are not only making it possible for the blazing of a new trail in education, but are interpreting Pine Mountain in a practical and friendly way to those of their own people whose vision has slumbered through generations of isolation and poverty.

Page 2 [dear_friends_1938_03_002.jpg]

[Photograph captions: “The Boys Build a Milkhouse”, “Stella Brings Hygiene”, and “Nan Brings Story Books”]

But this is only a part of Pine Mountain — is really the climax for the older girls — and I yearn to convey to you a picture of its whole life in this day when training for young people is being so questioned. As I write this, Nan goes by on her horse with books for lonely places; a group of boys are fixing our road; Alafair (whose father was shot not long ago) is industriously cleaning the office, and I know that all over the School one hundred young people are doing the chores before they meet in classes where “subjects” are secondary to the more important matter of learning how to manage one’s self and to live and work with other people. And always from my window I can see Uncle William’s and Aunt Sal’s little one-room cabin which stands at the foot of the hill ever reminding us of their hope for the “young-uns”.

Is not such a place as Pine Mountain, fostering and spreading as it does, a program that keeps alive the simple, wholesome and satisfying virtues of American life, worthy of some small sacrifice?

Faithfully yours,
[signed] Glyn A. Morris

$8,531.00 – Needed to meet current expenses
     267.60 – Cash available
$8,263.40 – Amount which we must raise by this letter

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