Interview with Mr. Sam Duck
May 3, 2003
Interviewed by Sandra M. Lowe
Mr. Duck began school in 1946 and attended Windsor School (Sugar Hill). He was able to ride to school on the first bus available to students going there.
Q. Mr. Duck, would you tell us, first of all, the area of Isle of Wight that you grew up in.
A. I grew up in the Walters area of Isle of Wight County…and it was in the area known as Ducktown.
Q. And how sisters and brothers did you have?
A: There were twelve of us children; there was seven boys and five girls – now living there’s three girls and three boys.
Q: And what schools did they attend?
A: My older brothers and sisters attended – Mitchell School and Gates School.
Q: And when were you born?
A: I was born in 1939.
Q: And the school, elementary school, that you attended?
A: They closed – my brothers next to me went to Gates School, because we were living closer to Gates School at that time. And Gates School closed down the year before I started to school. And all of us had to go to the old Windsor School in Sugar Hill. So when I started to school in 1946, I along with the rest of my younger brothers and sisters, went to Windsor School.
Q: And where is the Windsor School?
A: The Windsor School was located in Sugar Hill a mile on the other side of Windsor on Highway 258.
Q: What grades were taught at Windsor?
A: At the old Windsor School, grades one through seven were taught. Grades one through four were taught by Mrs. Ethel Joyner and grades five through seven were taught by Miss Lillian Parker.
Q: And how many classrooms were in there?
A: There were two classrooms and a kitchen.
Q: Do you know of any information about the history of Windsor School, when it was opened or whether it was owned by the county or private school?
A: When I started to Windsor School it was operated and owned by the county. There was a lot of private donations and things of that sort done by parents and people in the community, but the school itself was, I believe, supported by the county, because there were ______ teachers and all of that ______.
Q: As far as you know the county paid for the teachers and basic supplies?
A: The basic supplies were paid by the county at that time.
Q: When you started to school, how did you get to and from school – and how far were you away from it”
A: I lived approximately ten miles from school and a bus, my brothers and sisters walked to school; they walked to Gates School, but the year I started to school, in 1946, a bus was put – put out there and I never had to walk. I always rode a bus. And 1946 was the first year the bus was put out there for elementary children. There was a bus that ran to Smithfield prior to I starting to school, that carried only high school children. Elementary school children walked. But the year I started to school was the first year the bus was put out there. That was in 1946, for elementary children.
Q: Very good. Did you have any jobs to do around the house before you went to school?
A: Yes. There were chores that I had to do before going to school. I had to feed the chickens in the morning. And sometimes my mother would make me rake the yard because I guess I was mischievous and there a lot of us kids.
Q: Did you have specific chores to do at school?
A: At school we had to make a fire, we had a coal heater, we had to make a fire. And sometimes we had to go out and find the kindling to make the fire. There was always some coal to put in the heater, but we had to get kindling of some type to make the fire. And we had to – we had a pump that the boys had to prime the pump and start the pump whenever someone wanted water.
Q: All right. And how did the school day start once you got off the bus – did you have some free time before the class started or did you line up and go in or –
A: We – the bus that we rode also had high school children, so we always got to school long before time for us to start class, because that bus had to go on to Smithfield, so we were at the elementary school quite early, and we had to wait for classes to start because it was early so that bus had time to get those kids to Smithfield.
Q: How did the teacher begin her day, what did you do?
A: The teacher began her day with a devotion. We always had devotional and – and in the morning we had devotional and at lunchtime we had to say our grace. And in the afternoon we did something like a closing, I don’t know if it was a watchword or what it was, in the afternoon.
Q: Uh-huh. What was your first subject.
A: In the first grade there were – there were several grades in the same room and we’d all be doing something different, depending on the grade. But you were all in the same room. And – the morning might start off with spelling, or it might be reading or might be arithmetic.
Q: Do you recall any of your – names of any of your books or characters?
A: One of the books, the most popular books, was Fun with Dick and Jane. And the other book was an arithmetic book. And if you were in the lower grades, there weren’t a lot of hard-back books. And a lot of it – there were no books. The teacher taught from her experience, you know. She just taught it without some books in some of the classes.
Q: Do you have any of your books?
A: There are some of the books in the family. I can’t say which one of the children have them, but there are some of our class books still in the family.
Q: Okay. And do you recall the hours of school, when it started and ended?
A: It was nine to three.
Q: And how long was the school year?
A: Nine months.
Q: Nine months starting and –
A: September, always September. And – it was September through May, through the end of May. Now we are going to June and we start in August. But back in that time you started in September through May.
Q: Do you recall any experiences that went on when you were in school?
A: It was a learning time and it was a fun time. We had recess and we – the woods was close to the school at the old Windsor School and we did a whole lot of playing in the woods.
Q: Where did you eat lunch and how long did you stop for a lunch period?
A: I think we had something like forty-five minutes at least for lunch. And we ate lunch in the classroom.
Q: Did you have recess after lunch?
A: Yes, we had recess after lunch.
Q: What can you tell us about your recess period and the games that you played.
A: Most time the game were – we were either romping through the woods or – if a kid had a ball, everybody had to share that ball; if a kid didn’t bring a ball to school that day then we didn’t play ball. But most of the game that we played were some type of softball and running and ripping.
Q: All right. How would you describe the classroom –
A: The classroom or –
Q: The room, what was in the room and –
A: The classroom, the teacher had a desk and you had single and double seats with the bookrack in front of you. And some of the seats were double and some of them were single. The seats folded up. On the top of the desk was an inkwell and a place for a pencil and a place for you to put your books in Those desks are real heavy; the sides were made out of iron. And when we got to the old Joy Tyler School there was a new type individual desk with everything included, including the bookrack under the desk and the desktop.
Q: Do you recall anything else being in the room besides the students’ desks and the teacher’s desk?
A: The room, the floors were bare, and we had to keep the floors clean. All the work that was – that had to be done at the school had to be done by either the teacher or the students and certain students were assigned certain things, little tasks, to do by the teacher. And they did those little things every day, those little chores.
Q: And did that include getting things in for the stove?
A: Yes. That included getting things in for the stove. We had outside toilets.
Q: Okay.
A: They were a distance from each other; there were one for the girls and one for the boys. There was a piano in the hallway, between the two classrooms at the old Charty Town School. There was a hallway, a little small kitchen, and that kitchen was used mainly as a clinic, you know, if somebody got sick or something, because there was no food served. And – but in the hallway there was a piano and we had fun with that.
Q: When you went to the Georgie Tyler School you were talking about the Windsor School that was across the street –
A: Right.
Q: After the –
A: Georgie Tyler School was built directly across the street from the old Sugar Hill Windsor School.
Q: The teacher’s desk, anything stand out about it?
A: The teacher’s desk was nothing – that was a standard desk that when we went over to Georgie Tyler was similar; they were probably an older type and they were all made of solid oak and the teacher’s chair was a solid oak chair. They were very substantially built desk and chairs.
Q: The chalkboard, where was it and – and how did you get your lighting?
A: When I started to school, there was electricity. There was electric lighting at the school, though, you know, we never had a chance to use it because we were always there in the daytime.
Q: Do you recall there being any other school supplies around in the – in the room?
A: The only school supplies that I saw or remember were things that the teachers bought or that the parents contributed. There were very few supplies I think that probably came from the county. Most – most of the material that we used was either furnished by the teacher or parents or student.
Q: Did – was there anything on the walls?
A: The only thing that was on the wall was a blackboard and the different seasons of the year the teacher would decorate the best she could with what she had. At Easter time there would be some type of bunny rabbit or something or at Thanksgiving would be some turkey made out of construction paper or something like that, something that the teacher herself purchased.
Q: Was there a cloakroom or place to hang your coats and hats?
A: There’s the old area out in the hall in the kitchen area is where we hung our wrap.
Q: When there was a need for discipline, how was that handled?
A: When there was a need for discipline, you were disciplined in the classroom by the teacher, either with paddle, in most cases with a ruler and your hand. There was no whip or anything like that; it was always she would – you would get paddled with a ruler.
Q: Any personal memories of that –
A: I do have personal memories. I got paddled quite often. And Mrs. Lillian Parker Holman, you ’d never forget one of her paddlings. Mrs. Joyner didn’t do that much paddling. She was a easy type people – lady, and people just stayed quiet around her for some reason. And Mrs. Holman, she would paddle you. And she didn’t hesitate to do it.
Q: Do you have positive memories of your school days, your teachers and students?
A: Yes, I do.
Q: What would those – some of those memories be?
A: I had good teachers. Mrs. Joyner, I had all respect for her. I was a member of Chapel Grove United Church of Christ and all weekend very active in church. And I used to have to be a delegate on paper reader at a union. And whenever I was paper reader, Mrs. Joyner wrote the paper for me and I always got first Banner, because she always did a good paper.
Q: Are there any negative memories of your school days?
A: I have some negative memories, but that’s the way things were at that time and I have to say that they are negative. We had to ride a long ways to school and we were always crowded on the buses. There were never enough room on the buses; you had to stand until some of the kids got off of the bus to make room for you. In the afternoon when the high school bus came from Smithfield and stopped at the old Windsor School to pick up the elementary school, most of the high school already had the seats to you had to stand until you got space to sit back down. And – well, we used to pass the white buses; they were like they always had plenty of room in the buses and plenty of buses. And I always wondered why I had to pass one school to go to another. I didn’t understand integration at that time when I was a kid. I used to wonder why I had to pass a school to go to another school, but as I grew older I understood the system and that’s the way things were. And things didn’t change while I was in school.
Q: Are there any additional school experiences you would like to tell us about?
A: At the old two-room school or at Georgie Tyler?
Q: Windsor Sugar Hill.
A: The Sugar Hill School, kids were more eager to learn during those days, then they were after I got further up in school. It looked like they were more eager to learn and they were easily disciplined; they – kids weren’t – didn’t get into a whole of trouble back then because they knew what the consequences were. First, the teacher was going to whip you, then she was going to send a note to your mother, and your mother, your parents would whip you. And disciplinary problems were not as bad in the two-room school. Things were rough. We had to get up early in the morning because you had a long ways to go to school. And then the parents had to get especially early because they had to fix breakfast and lunch for the children. And it was rough, but it was the way things were at that time.
Q: When you went to Windsor Sugar Hill until Georgie Tyler opened, so you would have gone to Georgie Tyler until you were six or seven?
A: I went to – I went to Windsor Sugar Hill School 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949. I went the Sugar Hill School through the fourth grade. I completed the fourth grade and that was the end of the old Sugar Hill School. I started my fifth grade at the new Georgie Tyler School. And I started in the fifth grade under Lillian Holman, because she was the fifth grade teacher.
Q: And who were your sixth and seventh grade teachers?
A: My sixth grade teacher was Mrs. Coma Walden, Coma P. Walden. My seventh grade teacher was Mrs. Julia D. Washington.
Q: Are there any other early childhood memories that you recall that weren’t connected with school?
A: Yes. That weren’t connected with school?
Q: Uh-huh.
A: Yes. I remember that back in those days the church and the school worked together. They had a good work relationship. In most cases the school was in the neighborhood and the church in a lot of cases the school and the church probably had the same name. And there was the same people in the church that was in the school. And that was pretty good, too, you know, for a ethical community. You were dealing with the same people on Sunday that you saw at school during the week. And they were community school, community churches.
Q: After attending school, what jobs and other experiences did you have as a chap?
A: After completing school?
Q: Uh-huh.
A: While I was in school I worked odd jobs, odd barn jobs in the afternoon for – on the farm, different farmers in my community. And on Saturday morning I cut somebody’s grass or raked somebody’s yard to get spending change. And I did that. In the summertime we worked on the farm and we made money to buy our school clothes and I did that through graduation. And when I graduated from Georgia Tyler High School, I arranged to go to Saint Paul College that fall of 1958. And before September got here I had got a job in Newport News Shipbuilding and I stayed there through retirement.
Q: Are there any additional highlights of your life that you would like to tell us about?
A: Yes. I – I joined the army in 1959 because when I went to the shipyard in August of 1958, after I graduated, I was still working when September came, so I didn’t go to Saint Paul. And I got laid off after working three months in the shipyard, and there I was, I wasn’t in college, I was out of a job, and all of my other buddies had gone off to college and I was without a job and doing nothing, so I went down and I told the registrar that I would like to volunteer for the draft. And – because I wanted to make something out of myself, so I figured since money was short I would go in the army and make a career of the army. And I did that and they called me and I went in the army in March of 1959 and I got there and I didn’t like the army and I had gotten a call back to the shipyard while I was in the service, so – and my job was waiting for me when I got out in 1961, so I went back to the shipyard and I stayed there in the shipyard and I worked my way up to supervisor and then to general foreman and I stayed there thirty-seven and a half years and retired.
Q: Any, would you like to tell us something about your family?
A: My family are – there were twelve of us children. And out of the twelve children only three of us graduated from high school. The three youngest ones graduated from high school. And due to the way things were at that time my brothers and other siblings were older, far older than I was. And when I was in high school, I had a brother who had a son who was the same age as me, so – that’s the way my family ran, so it was a long span and – as a family, you know, I’m proud of my family. And – but my parents always supported the schools, the old Windsor School, they supported it as parents, and also the Georgia Tyler School and that was the way things were at that time. If you had children in school, you supported the school; you did the best you could do. And I appreciate the experience of going to a one-room school and there are memories that you never forget, being in a one-room school, because there were so many things that you had to do yourself. The county didn’t do that much to help the schools. And everything was inferior. Nothing was up to par. You had to make the best of what you had. And a lot of respect and thanks should go to those teachers who were in those one-room schools who did the best they could do with what they had; and they really didn’t have anything except for a ruler and a pencil.
Q: ----- Do you have anything else you would like to add? I have no more questions.
A: Growing up in this community I never left the community that I grew up in. I lived now about eight miles from where I was born at. And always liked this area and I was glad that I could go to school in this area and glad that I was able to settle in this area. I married a girl from this area and we met in school. And I raised my kids in this area. And I just love Windsor and Walters’s area.
MS. LOWE: Mr. Duck, thank you very much for your interview I thoroughly enjoyed it and really appreciate your giving your time today to help us keep the memory alive. Thank you very much.
MR. DUCK: Correct. I was glad to do it.