Miss Perkins

I met Iola Perkins during my first week on the job in Addison.  I was a thirty-year old, still wet behind the ears, elementary school principal, and she was a veteran teacher old enough to be my mom.  If they put a picture of a teaching spinster in the dictionary, they could have called upon Iola to model.  She featured a bee-hive hair-do, was a bit plump, round-faced with a kind smile, and very much set in her ways.  She was active in her church, wouldn’t say “poop” even if she had a mouthful and, most importantly to me, dedicated to her students.  She loved them all.

She started working for the Addison Community Schools at its Devils Lake building in 1953.  Twenty-four years later, she found herself working for me.  The year prior she was a combination teacher/principal at Devils Lake.  The district closed the last of its feeder schools when it opened the new middle school in the fall of 1977.  She was assigned to teach second grade.  In her last official act as building principal, she cleaned out and packed up all of the teaching supplies for the Devils Lake’s five classrooms, and brought them with her to the Wayne Gray Building.   And while I didn’t realize it at the time, the day we met she was still unpacking her treasure trove and locking it securely in the cupboards of room sixteen for her future student’s use.

Our first exchange was brief but pleasant.  She welcomed me to the school and wished me well.  I began calling her “Miss Perkins” that day and seldom used “Iola” throughout our time together.

Here’s a few highlights from those days.

Freddy

The first student I met in Addison was Freddy.  I don’t recall his last name.  He showed up at school about the same time as me, three weeks prior to opening day.  We met my very first day and had a daily visit until school began.   I learned that he lived in town, would be walking to school,  be a second grader, had a younger brother who was going to be in “afternoon” kindergarten, and they’d be attending Addison for the very first time.  He’d check into the office when he arrived, walk through the school so he would become familiar with the place, and then he’d head out to the playground.

The week before school started all of the student classroom assignments were posted on the entrance doors. While most returning students knew where to report, new students were added and departing students subtracted on a daily basis.  On one of his many visits I told Freddy that he would be in room sixteen with Miss Perkins.  “You’ll like her.”

Freddy was the first student to arrive on the opening day of school.  He was there before many of the staff members.  We spoke briefly in the hall outside of my office about the exciting day.  It was a first for both of us.

I was standing about ten feet from Freddy when the opening call to class bell rang.  He started to cry.  “I’m scared.”  The boy who had walked about like he owned the place for three weeks sobbed and sobbed.  I put my arm around him and told him that everything would be alright.  “I’ll walk with you to class.”

“I can’t go!”

Out of nowhere Miss Perkins appeared.

“Miss Perkins, this is Freddy.  He’s one of your students and he’s having a rough start.”

She embraced Freddy, pulled him to her bosom, and buried his face there.  She patted his head and told him everything would be alright.  She put her arm around him and said, “Come with me.  You’re going to love our classroom.  We’ve got a lot of great boys and girls this year.”

He did and he did.

Locks and Keys

Miss Perkins locked everything.  She’d open a cupboard, retrieve an item, and lock it back up.  Everything in her room was secure.

One afternoon, after school was dismissed,  she couldn’t find her keys. Her coat closet was the only door open in her room. She had checked the unlocked drawers of her desk, her coat, purse, the bottom of the closet, and the classroom floor. The keys were nowhere to be found.

After retracing her steps for the day she determined that they must be in her file cabinet, as that was the only place that she might have dropped them, but it was locked. She came to the office seeking a duplicate key to the cabinet.  I grabbed anything that looked like it might match her room and did my best to open its drawers.  I failed.

I walked across the driveway to the maintenance building, retrieved a hammer and a crowbar, and pried the cabinet open wide enough to trigger the locking mechanism.  Iola  scrambled through the files but couldn’t locate the keys.  Her entire life was on that ring.

Her car pool partners waited the entire time that our search continued.  They needed to be on their way as a couple had children that needed to be picked up from day care.  Defeated, Iola decided to move on.  Her search would have to wait until tomorrow.

She retrieved her coat, her purse, and her boots from the closet.  She slipped on her boots and felt something unusual in the toe.   She stuck in her hand and pulled out her keys.  And for the lady who had a place for everything and kept everything in its place, the mystery was solved.

TBC