Part 1 - Emma Hamsher, Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher
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The hero an individual admires says a lot about a person’s character. But, educators have not often been high on the list of superstars. Teachers have historically had marketing problems - Miss Frizzle on Disney’s Magic School Bus may be the most definable teacher youngsters know. Her catchphrase embraces a learning style: Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy! Miss Frizzle's colorful dresses match the day's lesson with pictures, and her thematic earrings glow when she's about to start a new field trip.
Mr. Rogers, of children's TV fame, is quite the opposite in his conservative cardigan, white shirt, and tie. His big smile, soft spoken voice, and calmness are near saintly. He once said, "... anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me". Many former student have teachers who have been heroes to them, helped them find their purpose, helped them stay on course. They often are the one adult who cares about them and motivates them to succeed.
Miss Emma Hamsher from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania was so inspired by the hero tale of Anne Sullivan, a teacher for the blind and deaf, that in 1917, at age 17, Emma took a train to Alamogordo, New Mexico, to become a teacher at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. Miss Sullivan became the inspiration for Emma and thousands of other young idealists to become educators. Emma admired Anne so much that she would name her daughter after her.
Anne Sullivan's history was told by her student in a book published in 1903 called, The Story of my Life by Helen Keller. Anne was a legally blind woman whose parents were Irish Potato Famine immigrants. In 1866, when she was five years old, she contracted a painful bacterial eye disease, trachoma, which caused a series of infections and made her nearly blind. Her mother died from tuberculosis three years later and her father abandoned her and her younger brother two years after that. Her younger sister was left with an aunt.
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(left to right) Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Helen Keller's autobiography, 1903
Anne and her brother, Jimmie, were sent to an almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Jimmie died from tuberculosis four months into their stay. In 1875, following reports of cruelty to inmates at Tewksbury, including sexual abuse and cannibalism, the Massachusetts Board of State Charities launched an investigation. The investigation committee included Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston.
Sullivan was sent to the Soeurs de la Charité hospital in Lowell where she endured several unsuccessful eye operations. The trachoma she suffered from causes the eyelashes to turn under the eyelid and scratch and irritate the corneas; pus drains from the red, swollen eyes and lymph nodes are swollen in front of the ears. It is a chlamydia based bacteria and is transmitted by flies in poverty stricken places - unwashed bedding, clothing, and hands help spread the most common cause of blindness worldwide.
When she was transferred back to Tewksbury, she begged not to be sent back to the ward with ill and insane patients; instead, she was housed with single mothers and unmarried pregnant girls. During a subsequent inspection of the almshouse, Sullivan implored the chairman of the committee to allow her to go to the Perkins School for the Blind, considered the best school for the blind in the United States. Within a matter of months, her wish was granted.
Anne Sullivan began her education at Perkins without reading or writing skills. She graduated at age 20, in June 1886, as the valedictorian of her class. She was a feisty Irish girl who knew she had to speak up to be taken seriously. She made friends with Laura Bridgman, the first blind and deaf person to graduate from Perkins and she learned the manual alphabet from Laura - a sign language transmitted by creating letters into the palm of a deaf-blind person’s hand.
The summer after Sullivan graduated, the director of Perkins School for the Blind was contacted by Arthur Keller, Helen Keller's father. He wanted to hire a teacher for his seven-year-old blind and deaf daughter. Sullivan was recommended for the position and she began her work in 1887 at the Keller's home in Alabama. Upon arrival, Anne argued with Helen's parents about the Civil War and over the fact that they had owned slaves. But, she quickly connected with Helen and for the next 49 years, Sullivan went from teacher to governess to companion and friend.
Sullivan's curriculum was strict; she constantly introduced new vocabulary based on Helen’s interests by spelling each word out into Keller's palm. Within six months her student learned 575 words, some multiplication tables and the Braille system.
Sullivan encouraged Helen's parents to send her to the Perkins School in Boston in 1888 and stayed there with her. Sullivan’s protégé became famous for her remarkable progress. Keller became the public face of the school, helping to increase its funding and donations and making it the most famous and sought-after school for the blind in the country.
Alexander Graham Bell, telephone and phonograph inventor, met Sullivan and Keller and was greatly impressed by their success. Bell’s mother and wife were both legally deaf and he spent a lifetime trying to create inventions to make their lives easier. He famously put his pocket watch against Helen’s cheek to feel its chimes to tell time. Bell donated funds to send Helen to Radcliffe College, now part of Harvard University; Anne accompanied her. Sullivan and Keller went on lecture tours under the auspices of the Y.W.C.A and both became global celebrities at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Emma followed the two women’s fame in newspapers and books. She decided to become a teacher for the blind. To be fair, Emma’s role models and career choices were limited during the “Progressive Era” she grew up in. Women had very few vocational options at the turn of the century. Domestic servants made up the largest sector of the female workforce; factory workers, store clerks, dress makers, nurses, and teachers were other income-producing possibilities for “the weaker sex” needing or wanting to work.
There was a “marriage bar” in the United States that persisted until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing hiring discrimination based on sex. The “bars” were based on the idea that married women should not be distracted from their home lives by a job and should not take a job from a man who needed to support his family. Female teachers at this time could not be married and were expected to resign before their nuptials because they would no longer be able to focus on their teaching with a man in the house!
In 1916, Emma was completing her year of teacher training at Temple Baptist College in Pennsylvania. At the same time, Elizabeth Garrett, the blind daughter of Pat Garrett who shot Billy the Kid, was finishing an eight year teaching stint teaching music at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. She would move to New York to begin a musical career and would become known as “The Songbird of the Southwest.” Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller began a speaking tour across the United States in 1916. Meanwhile, Emma’s future husband, Harry Disney Minturn, was in Kansas City, having just married a young heiress whose father had been a successful pioneer physician in the city that straddles two state lines.
Elizabeth Garrett
The Kansas City newspaper's story about Roby Singleton Minturn did not shock the local residents because they knew she had a reputation for being an unbridled filly. Roby had filed for divorce and petitioned to change back to her maiden name from her married name. She had married an advertising man who lived at the Densmore Hotel, Mr. Harold Disney Minturn. Her husband had a counter-lawsuit against his mother-in-law, and six other inlaws for $50,000 for causing alienation of affection from his wife. They also had a custody suit over a motor car - each claiming the other drove too fast and would crash the brand new automobile.
The couple had been married for less than a year when Roby filed divorce papers. The wealthy daughter of the late Dr. J.M. Singleton of Kansas City, admitted that she supported Harry financially. The couple tried to make reconciliation with a trip to New Orleans, but this failed. Harold dismissed his lawsuit in order to reach an undisclosed settlement from the Singleton family. He promised to “get out of Dodge,” (Kansas City) and he said he planned to go to Pennsylvania to join the military with the U.S. 's looming inclusion in the world war.
In 1917, Emma and Harry met at the military base near her home several months before her departure for the West and his potential deployment. The whirlwind romance ended that summer with an engagement ring (slightly used), and promises to write.
Minturn was training in Pennsylvania with the 334th Tank Corps as a mechanic when Miss Emma departed from Pennsylvania. She promised her fiancé, Harry, a man of medium height and medium build, dark brown hair and light blue eyes -according to his draft card, that she would marry him in five years. The war should be over by then and Harry could establish himself in a career while Emma worked at her dream job teaching high school at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. She promised Harry that she would return to begin a life as a wife and mother.
High schools barely existed in the nineteenth century; then suddenly, because of new compulsory education and child labor laws, a quarter of all 15 to 18-year-olds were going to school. Educators were suggesting that at least an eighth grade education was necessary in the new fangled world. New inventions included the toaster, the tommy gun, tanks, movie cameras, the passenger plane, the bra, the zipper, the assembly line, and a summer candy that wouldn’t melt - the Life Saver! Children needed more education for an increasingly complex mechanical and scientific world, and compulsory schooling became de rigueur.
Emma boarded her train for a three day trip to Alamogordo, New Mexico. The last night on board, there was a young mother with a very young child. Several friends the mother had made en route stopped by and invited her to the observation car. She left her child in the seat and went to the observation car with the other young people. The baby became restless and began crying. Men in the car near the baby tsk-tsked. Emma picked up the child and signaled the porter over to her. She said if he would make up a berth, she would put the child to bed. He did, and in a short while the train car was once again quiet.
She was reading when a man sat down beside her saying, “That was a nice thing for you to do.” She did not respond. He finally asked, “Are you afraid of me?” She assured him that she was not and warmed up a bit; they had an interesting conversation until stopping in Tucumcari. From there, he was taking another train crossing the mountains to the Mescalero Indian Reservation.
Meanwhile, the train taking her to Alamogordo was being filled with hundreds of gallons of water and heaps of coal. The passengers went outside to stretch their legs by walking back and forth on the station platform. She noticed a man in a large Stetson hat swinging his legs as he sat on the baggage truck, its long tongue stretching out to trip passers-by. When the engine on her train was filled with thousands of gallons of water and holding as much coal as it could bear, the passengers climbed into their assigned cars and were set to arrive the next morning in Alamogordo.
Emma arrived three days before the opening of school. She was in awe of the grandeur of the desert and the mountains, the pure air and the exhilarating light. She had arrived from a low altitude and was around 4,000 feet higher in altitude and was not used to the dry desert air. A house parent invited her to play tennis but the game did not last long. Blood streamed from her nose at the 30-30 score when she became a gory mess. It looked like “murder on the tennis courts.”
The following day the students were returning - all three New Mexico cultures were represented: Native, Spanish and Anglo. Superintendent Pratt gathered everyone and the students were turned over to the house parents. He called the teachers to the office.
When the Superintendent was introduced to Emma, he joked that they were together in Tucumcari on Tuesday. She decided not to let him get away with the cheeky remark. " Sorry,” she said. “I didn't recognize you without your hat.” The other teachers looked puzzled about the relationship of these two who had never really spoken before - Mr. Pratt had just nodded while sitting on the baggage truck, swinging his feet in Tucumcari. He took her joke well and they would have a good working relationship for the next five years.
Transportation was not always reliable in the Tularosa Basin surrounding Alamogordo. There was a narrow gauge into the Sacramento Mountains, and during summers it was possible to rent a car or horse, but Emma wanted to explore the area and felt she needed a horse. She saw a sorrell listed for sale in the newspaper and she set off for the livery stable for a test ride.
The horse had all of his teeth and seemed to have the appearance of being strong and healthy. She found he handled easily, so she let him out. They were going at a fast clip when, without slowing, the horse turned sharply to the right and slid on all four hooves to a hitching post in front of a saloon. The sorrel had put his head down on his way to the saloon and Emma lost her reins. She grabbed the hair on his mane and left the saddle head over heels, cartwheeling over the hitching post boots hitting the wall next to the swinging saloon doors.
Two cowboys were heading out of the saloon at the same time. They picked her up, dusted her off and asked her if they could buy her a beer. She declined and informed them that it was the horse's idea to stop, not hers.
One cowboy had been looking over the beast and announced that this was Jake's horse. After they stopped laughing, they explained to her that Jake had left the community but had sold his horse before leaving. They explained that, rain or shine, day or night, going or coming, Jake and his horse would never pass the saloon without stopping for a drink. She climbed back into the saddle and took the horse back. She wondered where else that horse was conditioned to stop - places probably not fit for a school teacher!
Several days later, Mr Pratt sent a message that Emma needed to come to his office. He laughingly told her that she had created quite a sensation and a great deal of gossip in the town about how she was dressed in her Tweed English riding habit (an long apron over pants) and her acrobatics at the saloon. The story had probably improved with the telling.
He suggested that until the ladies in town got to know her, she should probably ride in a full split skirt, so they wouldn’t know she was riding astride. She eventually found a horse that didn’t stop at saloons, ordered a split skirt from the
Sears and Roebuck Catalog, lowered her stirrups, and rode around the countryside without creating the hullabaloo she had first ridden into town with.
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English Riding Habit Students in front of New Mexico Institute for the Blind
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View of Institute for the Blind from Alameda Park
To be continued…
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