Q Today is Saturday, March 12 and we are interviewing Mrs. Lelia Blount. Mrs. Blount went to one of the early schools, kindergarten, before it had a name and also taught at the Windsor School (Sugar Hill) in Windsor for several years.
Q: What area of Isle of Wight did you grow up in?
A: In Smithfield, in Riverview.
Q: Did you have sisters and brothers?
A: No.
Q: Give us an idea of your early school years. You told me you attended K-3 at someone’s home.
A: K teacher was very sweet, she loved children. When I went to Smithfield School on the hill I was in Third Grade. I can remember Miss Salone Shivers was my teacher, and Mrs. Croft and Mrs. Oliver. I remember those three.
Q. The name of the lady who taught you K-3?
A: Mrs. Hawkins.
Q. Do you remember her first name?
A. I can’t remember. I’m 88 years old you know.
Q: After you grew up and did other types of work you wound up teaching at the Windsor School, right? Did you teach anywhere else other than the Windsor School?
A: I also taught in Lawrenceville.
Q: What year did you start at Windsor?
A: I don’t remember.
Q: Do you have an idea; was it the forties or fifties?
A: It was in the forties. I don’t try to remember all those things anymore.
Q: What do you remember; did you work with anyone?
A: That was a two-room building wasn’t it? I worked with my aunt (Lelia and Willie Boone Cleaners) and my grandmother had a restaurant. Both were on _______Hill right beside each other.
Q: When you taught at Windsor were you the only teacher?
A: There was another teacher, Mary Jones when I first started, and Mrs. Alexander (husband, Rev. Alexander, from Rushmere).
Q: Did you teach there for about five years?
A: Just about, yes.
Q: What grades did you teach?
A: First through Third.
Q: How did you go about teaching three grades in one room?
A: I started in the morning and we’d sing our little songs and everyone was happy, I’d work with the First and give Second and Third work to do, and when they finished I’d give them work to do and I’d work with 2nd and so on
Q: Did you have help you or did you have the older children to help you?
A: I had the older children help me.
Q: During those years that you were teaching there did you live far from the school?
A: I started out up there and__ would get someone to take me up to Windsor, Mrs. Rawls would take me so far and I wasn’t too pleased so then I didn’t have a car and my mother was working in New York and she helped me get a car, then I started driving up, and I married and I stayed not quite two years after that. I left the next year and my daughter was born.
Q: In 1936 Miss Jones and you were at the time you were a “Smith”, did you have someone to take you to the school?
A: No, I had to walk up to the highway through Mrs. Joyner’s yard and the woods then get a ride.
Q: Did you have chores you did in the school building before the children arrived?
A: Yes, I got the lessons ready. Some had arithmetic, English, and some had spelling.
Q: Before the children came to school, did you have to get the building ready?
A: No, I had three large boys and they would set the fire in the afternoon and get there a little early in the morning so the room would be warm. They were very nice.
Q: Did school go September to May?
A: Yes.
Q: What about lunch?
A: They brought their own lunch.
Q: Recess after?
A: Yes.
Q: Describe the furniture and other items in the room.
A: Well, it had a blackboard. I had to go to the superintendent and ask for one.
Q: Who was the superintendent, was it Mr. Hall?
A: Mr. Hall.
Q: What else do you remember getting from the school system?
A: Not much, crayons and some books, very scarce.
Q: What did you do about books?
A: I had a book that I used. Then I would run the papers off for each child.
Q: What kind of heat?
A: An old big, potbelly wood stove.
Q: Did the county supply the wood? Or did you have to go get it yourselves?
A: The boys went and got it.
Q: What other things did the community help you out with?
A: We, Mrs. Jones and I, would have parties to get things we needed.
Q: Did you ever cook on the stove?
A: No.
Q: Where was the water supply?
A: Out in the yard.
Q: Did you have a cloakroom?
A: In the hall, by the back door and between the two rooms.
Q: What kind of punishment did you use?
A: Stay in during recess; I didn’t do much punishment.
Q: Not much call for it in those days?
A: Not much, no. One little boy I had to punish more than the others.
Q: What kind of positive memories did you have?
A: I just loved my children. I made mittens and gave them to children.
Q: Any other memories you’d like to tell us?
A: I guess not. We used to have programs for the parents.
Q: Anything you didn’t like about the school?
A: No, not really, I loved it and the children, and the children were so sweet.
Q: Can you tell us about your life from then ‘til now?
A: My father worked on the boats in Norfolk and he was in Richmond when he drowned. I stayed with grandmother, anyway. My mother went away and got a job on the line with some other ladies. My grandmother and I were like sisters. She’d do anything to help me. I just love her. She had a restaurant and I worked there with her. She paid me $2.00 a week and I’d buy canned food and take it home and keep it in a closet ‘til she went home. We had food to eat and we enjoyed being together. She did go much except to church. I went to church with the Wrens, they had three girls. Once my grandmother had to whip me. It was the only time. They had a program at Brown AME Church, and Hampton Institute, Virginia State College, and Va. Union and each group would bring their singers and I enjoyed that. I went every night but Friday, and I wanted to go so bad. Grandmother said I’d gone all week and I couldn’t go Friday, well that hurt me and I hollered, screamed and kicked ‘til she used a switch from her Peach tree and tore my legs up. She made me go to bed without supper. It was about three o’clock in the evening and she said “No supper tonight. Anyone that acts the way you acted can't have any supper”. So when my grandfather came in she fixed his plate, he said, “where’s Pudding”, he called me that. She told him what happened and I hollered and spoke to him and he said, “Pudding” that ladies “raw” this evening. I can remember him saying that now. One of the things I used to help them with in the shop, I used to buy all the groceries, same thing at home, she never went to the grocery store, I used to buy all the groceries. I was about 8 or 9, go to the bank go to the post office and mother sent the checks, and I started out that way. After I got married and my daughter was born, my husband built me a chicken house, a large one too, two stories, and I used to have 2,000 chickens, at the time he worked at the Navy Yard. I had two children and had to get someone to help grandmother with ______________and I had a dog and his name was “Blondie”. Blondie didn’t need me and when people came to buy or bring me chickens, Blondie was right beside me, that was during the war, and I loved Blondie, she was a pretty dog, and things like that, and then my aunt would call me to go to the store and do things for her at that place on the wharf side by side here…and then after the war I didn’t sell chickens like I did during the war, so I give it up. I started…would stay home with momma, my aunt Lelia had a fit and I used to collect for her on Mondays, anyway all along Church Street, all those big houses, doctors and all of those people in Smithfield and I would come home and she wanted me to help her in the shop and I told Aunt Lelia, I have a baby and got a babysitter and I went to work for my aunt. A man was picking up clothes in Rushmere for her (the cleaners), left her without telling her, and she was losing her trade so my aunt asked me to pick them up. She said,” I’m no boy”, yes but you can do it. I asked my husband and he was kind of slow about it, but he said, if you would take grandmother and the baby-Lorraine, she taught with your daddy, Mr. Lowe- Lorraine Blount in the science dept. I went with my grandmother and the baby until she got someone. I started in Central Hill and got a good run, from white and colored gave me clothes and when she got this other man she sent him up there. She wanted me to take the shop when she got older but my husband and I were building our own home and couldn’t leave him because he didn’t have any help. I would get his materials days and he would come home nights and work on it until 12 or 1 o’clock, he and I, some nights. We finished the house in a little over a year…so she wanted me to come in there and when she got a little older, she wanted me to take the shop, but we had just moved in my home, and we hadn’t paid for it, and she needed all new chimney work, so I couldn’t do that but she was satisfied because I waited on her and my mother when they were sick—at the same time—mother was at home with me and my aunt was in her house on Church Street, you know that last house that got hose chairs on there. I waited on her until she passed. My mother passed away in the morning about 4 o’clock. They called me from the hospital; the nurse said don’t come by yourself, I used to go down there and see her by myself and he would stay with my aunt, but I knew then something was wrong, well I went and my husband said he was going with me, so we went early this morning and they sent us around the back of the hospital, well, that afternoon, my mother had passed-that afternoon about three or four my aunt passed—I had to have a double funeral at Brown’s AME Church. I’ve been through the mill.
Q. Thank you very much for telling us about that…and did you want to tell us about your children?
A. Lorraine, the one that taught science in Windsor, finished Hampton (Univ.), had been teaching for 30 years, just stopped this year. Harriet, the other little girl she’s in Gaithersburg, MD she’s married also and she had one son, Lorraine had two children and the oldest daughter just got married last year. Her son, he stayed in the army as captain for about four years and now he’s in Ohio. He’s in his own home, all of my children have their on home and my Harriet’s boy lives in NC, and he has his on home and he works in or with computers. Harriet is a secretary…she’s had this job for years working for the county, and all of my grandchildren have good jobs and have their on homes…and I’m so proud of them.
Q. Very good, very good. I don’t have any more questions for you. Did you have anything else you’d like to add?
A. No I don’t have anything else.
Q. Thank you very much for the interview Mrs. Blount, and for giving us so much interesting information.