Interview with Mrs. Eunice Green
April 16, 2003
Interviewed by Jean Uzzle
Mrs. Green and her siblings attended Trinity School, which was located beside Emmanuel Baptist Church, and had three classrooms.
Q: What area of Isle of Wight did you grow up in Mrs. Green?
A: In Smithfield, Virginia.
Q: You mean the area?
A: Yeah the area_____where Bethany Church Road was, down toward the end.
Q: How many sisters and brothers did you have?
A: One brother and two sisters.
Q: What schools did they attend?
A: Trinity.
Q: So, you attended Trinity too?
A: Yes.
Q: What grades were taught there?
A: Up to the seventh grade.
Q: Did you stay at Trinity to the 7th grade?
A: Not all of it.
Q: How many classrooms were there?
A: 3 classrooms.
Q: So that meant it was three teachers?
A: 3 teachers.
Q: Can you remember some of the teacher’s name?
A: I will go by the last name. Mrs. Lawrence was Eleanor Lawrence, Mrs. Elise Godby and Mr. Gore.
Q: While you were attending Trinity, what grades were taught there, could you remember the subjects and grades that were taught there?
A: We had arithmetic, spelling, reading, history and geography.
Q: Do you remember what year you were attending?
A: No. (Laughter) it’s too far back.
Q: How did you get to school?
A: We walked to school and on rainy days, we would be brought in by _____car.
Q: Can you remember, or have any idea how far you walked? What was the distance to school?
A: About 5 ½ miles. 5 or 5 ½ miles.
Q: So that was 5 miles going.
A: And coming.
Q: What jobs did you do before you went to school at home? Did you have some things that you had to do before you went to school?
A: Naturally, we had to go out and feed the chickens. Just did little chores like that, and wash the dishes.
Q: What chores did you have to do at school? Was there anything that you have to do when you got to school?
A: Not anything particularly more than just, come in and you hand up your coats and things like that. But the chores were like; we help wash the baseboards and things like that.
Q: How did your school day start? When you first got to school, what were some of the things that you did to start off your day?
A: To start off the day, we would have a devotion time. Start off with a song and a prayer then we would go through the devotion time.
Q: Is there any special textbooks or reading books that you had while you were in school that kind of stuck with you that you can remember, remember the names of the books?
A: No. We had history and math and things like that.
Q: Was there a favorite book or something that you can remember?
A: Not really. No. (Laughter)
Q: So, how long was your school day?
A: It would be about 8 and I think that we would get out about 3.
Q: How long was the school year?
A: About the same now. Start in September and get out in May or June.
Q: Where did you eat lunch and how long did you have for lunch?
A: I think about a half a hour. I think it was and huh we eat lunch at school and huh ____ rooms.
Q: Did you have recess other than your lunch break?
A: We had a little recess, in the morning I think it was. We had a little recess though.
Q: Can you describe your classroom? What did the classroom look like, some things that were in your classroom if you can remember?
A: Well, we had our water pool in there and we had a big heater. They used coal and wood in the big heater. Then they had a little bowl so that we can go back and wash our hands, besides little seats and chairs.
Q: How did you get the water into the school?
A: How did they get the water…they had a big water cooler.
Q: A water cooler!!
A: They had a little faucet; they lift it up and let the water out of the faucet.
Q: Now, what about the bathrooms (restrooms)?
A: They were outside.
Q: Can you describe your teacher’s desk? What the desk look like?
A: Well, it’s hard for me to do that. (Laughter) It’s like the teacher’s desks now.
Q: Were there anything on her desk that you can remember that she would always keep on her desk?
A: A pencil sharper and alarm clock.
Q: Can you tell me what your seat or your desk look like?
A: Well, we had huh seat like a bench, can I describe it like a bench. You would lift the seat up and the little white thing. Some of us had chairs but it was like a little bench and you push up and down.
Q: Were there somewhere you can put your books?
A: Yeah they would go under there.
Q: Did they have blackboards or chalkboards?
A: They used chalkboards and they used the white chalk. But we still called them blackboards.
Q: Your supplies that you had for school, such as your paper, pencil and whatever else you had, if you had crayons or did you have to supply your own or did the school supply it?
A: We supplied our own.
Q: Can you remember if your teacher had anything on the walls that would help you with your lesson or aid you with your lesson? Was there anything on the walls that you can remember?
A: (Laughter) No not, unless she would just go from our lesson.
Q: Now, the lights in the school. Was there natural window light or did you have electricity or was there lamp lights?
A: No. They wasn’t electricity lights but they had something like lights hanging from the ceiling. But I don’t know what it was run by but I bet it was electric. But it was hanging from the ceiling, the light was and we didn’t have lamps or nothing like that. I don’t know if it was electricity at the time but it could have been.
Q: Your cloakroom, where there somewhere you hang your coats?
A: Yeah. They had a little closet with some little hooks on it, go in that little closet and hang your coats.
Q: Can you remember what punishment was like, if you misbehave in the classroom at that time?
A: Well, most of the time the punishment was they would give you something to do, a chore, make you do the chore. Or stand in the corner depends on how bad it was.
Q: Can you tell me about any other experience that you had in school that you, that kind of stuck with you in your school days that you can remember?
A: Well, I hardly can think of anything mostly. The more likely that we would go out and play and we would make our own balls with socks. We would play little games…little games like that; touch your toes or whatever.
Q: Is there any other childhood memories that you had that you might be able to think of?
A: No. Not too much missing. We wash the blackboards and go to recess.
Q: So at recess time what did you do? Did you have time to play little games?
A: We played ball, little things like that. We have little groups together and we would sit down and talk. Little things like that.
Q: So how was school closing? Did you have something special for school closing?
A: They are good memories, school closing yes. We used to have our school-closing program at night in the evening and all the parents would come out and had a good program.
Q: So can you see where there has been, there’s a change from the time you were in school to what it is now and if there is something that you would like to tell the children of today?
A: Yes, we had huh…it’s a lot of big changes were made since then. Because the children now they can ride the bus to school and we walked to school and huh, we had to go out and play and we had time to get the wood. Had to get the kindle for the next day, because the boys did most of that, get the kindle I called it kindle wood to make to fire and stuff. But I think that it was nice according to our time then.
Q: So, is there anything that you would like to tell the children of today, who have all the privileges?
A: I would say this, they are blessed. (Laughter)
Q: Do you have anything else that you would like to tell us? Give you a few minutes to express it.
A: I will tell you that they had the great advantage more than we did because we had to walk to school, when we get there it’s cold and sometimes you had to start the fire and wait till the room get warm. They don’t have that problem now. They walked right on in and they go in dress sleeves or little sleeves and sweaters whatever now. We had big coats on and we had to sit there till we got warm with coats on and things like that.
Q: Well, Mrs. Green, thank you so much for your interview and you have a good day.