Fifth Grade in Raleigh, N.C.

A brief history of the years before fifth grade will explain my innocence when entering fifth grade in Raleigh.

For the sake of brevity:

School history consisted of the first grade in rural Virginia in the late 1950's. Our school was a two or three room whitewashed wooden building with outhouses. The playground was dirt with all the customary play equipment. By today's standards they were death traps yet I do not remember anyone being killed or injured in any remarkable way. I could walk to the school from our house. I remember spring with the dogwood tree in our front yard and learning the story of the dogwood and the blood of Jesus. I remember winter with snow knee deep and school held as usual.

Second, third and fourth grade I was home schooled by my mother. My parents were missionaries to Ghana, West Africa. We lived
in the country outside of Kumasi, Ghana at a Baptist boarding school for local African teenagers. Our school materials were shipped to us by the Calvert Home School program out of the University of Maryland. The shipments included everything we would need including pens, pencils, paper, crayons, textbooks, teacher's manuals, etc. That program is in existence current day. We could have attended a local British school but my mother did not want us to get confused by the metric system nor to be subjected to the rigidity of the British way of doing things at that time in history. My brother started first grade and I went into the second grade. The Calvert School education was first class. I excelled in everything except math which was, coincidentally, my mother's weak subject. Our tests were sent on schedule to the United States to be graded and approved by a stateside Calvert School teacher. When we returned to the U.S. we were a grade ahead in every subject except math. The concentration on history, geography and reading put both my brother and myself ahead of the schools at home. ( Re-reading this and I decided to add a couple of things  I remembered about my time in Africa while watching a documentary recently.) My reading and comprehension were excellent. I read everything I could get my hands on and I listened to adults talk. No credit to me, that I listened, in those years children did not normally join in or interrupt adult conversations. I remember when Adolf Eichmann was captured. I remember the front page of the newspaper. I knew he was a bad man and I had a feeling of relief and happiness that he had been captured. I sensed that his crimes were heinous. I remember hearing that missionaries were being murdered in neighboring African countries and that the weapon of choice was hacking them to death with a machete. I had a low level of fear and apprehension with that knowledge in my head. It has stuck with me throughout my life. Death by machete? It sounded horrible. If any of the adult missionaries were concerned about safety I did not hear it discussed. Daily life was not impacted.

It is with this background that I entered Fred A Olds elementary school in Raleigh, N.C. There were several hundred students in grades one through six, I believe. It was a two story brick building with children everywhere. I am sure my mother took us to sign up and to an orientation. My class had at least twenty students of whom. all but one other student, had ben raised in the city of Raleigh. The other student was a girl who had lived in Alaska all of her life. She and I spent a long time adapting to our new world a school. I was innocent and she was more innocent than I, if such a thing was possible. It did not take long for the boys in the class to pick upon that tidbit. One boy in particular took great pleasure in writing words in the sand that I did not understand. My confusion threw him into spasms of laughter ending with him repeating the written words out loud. My mother explained each word to me. She remembers that I was bewildered and wondered aloud why anyone would use those words. With no reference of vulgarity at that point in my life those words were simply dictionary words plain and simple. We walked to school. There were crossing guards at the intersections. I loved having crossing guards. They added another layer of mystery to my growing collection of mysteries.
I have snippets of memory from that school year. Our classroom was on the second floor. The floors were wooden, the windows were tall and wide paned. We could look out to the front of the school and onto the street in front. I remember this because soon after I arrived I noticed that one of the girls in my classroom stood apart. Not comfortably so but more as a curiosity. I thought she would have given anything to be part of the crowd. I learned that her mother was famous and left her daughter with the grandmother who lived in Raleigh. Once in awhile her mother would come to the school to pick her up during the school day. I believe her mother was the famous, at that time, singer named Anita Bryant. You know how children whisper and gossip. It must have been awful for this girl. I did not get to know her and she remained aloof. She was a bit heavy-set. I learned years later that Anita Bryant did not approve of being overweight. There have been many times when I have see Anita Bryant's daughter sitting in our classroom knowing when she left to meet her mother in the car parked along the road that she had at least twenty pairs of eyes following her every move. Everyone wanted Mrs. Bryant to get out of the car. During my year at Fred A Olds that did not happen. Indeed, if I remember correctly, her daughter was taken out of class by her mom and moved away with her mother or a nanny or something. Sad story and my first lesson in the myth of money buying happiness.


My fifth grade year was the only year we were to live in Raleigh. Writing about it brings back more memories than I knew were knocking around in my head. One of them is impacted my life until this date and time in my life. I will save it for later.  Enough for now.


Raleigh - we lived in a campground, an elderly couple's home and two houses that we rented. By the beginning of the sixth grade we moved again.