Origins of the Shorter School

The building where I attended all 12 grades of public school was constructed in 1938.  It was only 10 years old when I started school there in 1948.  In the 1946-1947 school year, Shorter High School published a year book, its first in five years. It was dedicated to the memory of four alumni who made the supreme sacrifice in World War II. They were S/SGT Lewis Haden Rains (1920-1943); SGT James J. Jolley, Jr. (1924-1945); Harriet Engelhardt, (1919-1945); Seaman 1st Class W.C. Rodgers, Jr., 1924-1943) The number four does not sound large until one takes into account that the total enrollment in the 12 grade school was probably less than 100, and they were all born in a short span of five years.  That yearbook provides the following history of the school:

“In 1895, Professor J. T. Boyd was principal of the first school in Shorter.  In 1896 the unfinished McWhorter residence, along with twelve acres of land were bought, which is present site of the school. 

In 1920 the Macon County Board of Education consolidated Shorter and La Place and the first school bus operated in Macon County transported pupils from La Place to Shorter.  The same year Shorter High School qualified as an accredited school.  Also in the same year, Milstead, Bradford and Union were consolidated with Shorter, and the following year the pupils from Downs were transported here. 

In 1938 the old building had to be torn down and the present building, which is shown above, was constructed.  This building cost $52,000.  Mr. Ditmar of the State Department of Education, was the architect, and Mr. Henry I Flinn was the contractor. 

The following have served as principals of the school consecutively: Prof. W. T. Boyd, Prof. Russel, Prof. Grogan, Prof. Ward, Prof. Little, Prof. George, Prof. W. T. Vann, Prof. Simmons, Prof. Shaw, Miss Dudley, Miss Northington, Miss Dudley, Miss Howard, Miss Torburt, Prof. L. L. Hill, Prof. J. M. Trotter, Mrs. B. W. Booth, Prof. H. C. Holstun, Prof. Ponder, Prof. Ward, Prof. R. C. Dopson and Prof. C. D. Barefoot.” 

Faculty for the year 1946-1947 included Miss Ora Bryant, Commerce, Mrs. Steele L. Bibb, Mathematics, Mrs. C. D. Barefoot, Home Economics Science, Miss Mary DeBardeleben, English, History, Mrs. Rossie B. Pierce, First & Second Grades, Mrs. Ruby Duke, Third & Fourth Grades, and Mrs. Maurine R. Jolly, Fifth & Sixth Grades. 

Betty Menefee, my future bride, and I began the first grade in the 1948-1949 school year, two years after that year book was published. 

Steele L. Bibb, who was on the faculty in 1946-1947, the daughter of Dr. Philip Malcolm Lightfoot, who delivered Dale in 1942, had graduated from Shorter in 1926. My Daddy, Forrest Chandler Segrest, Sr., who was born in 1909, and the same age as Mrs. Bibb, was in the 7th grade in 1926.  The motto of his class, in the “for what it’s worth department” was “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” For the poor whites, school and education could still be difficult in those times, and Daddy did not attend school regularly.  Daddy’s previous schooling had been at the school at Bradford’s Chapel, that merged into Shorter in 1920, but apparently there was no bus that carried him to Shorter in the intervening years. The above history mentions only a bus from La Place. He lived near the Bradford’s Chapel school, but eight or nine miles from the Shorter School. In the schools that merged into Shorter in 1926, there was likely a single, one room school teacher for all 12 grades.  Mrs. Pierce, who taught Dale in the first and second grades at Shorter, had been Dale’s Dad’s teacher at the one room school at Bradford’s.  Mrs. Jolly, about whom more is said in another essay, was the one room school teacher at Downs.  The point: in an area of grinding poverty, with inadequate educational facilities and opportunities, progress was being made.  The construction of the Shorter School in 1938 was a major community building event.  It was not the product of wealth. But unfortunately, even in this cultural environment, similar Black schools lagged behind the white schools.  The one room school at Bethel Grove, that was located a quarter of a mile from the one room Bradford’s school that merged with Shorter in 1920, was still in operation in the 1950’s. But in the 1950’s, the D. C. Wolfe high school was built for Blacks in the Shorter community, prior to the Civil Rights movement and the onslaught of Lee v. Macon, the lawsuit that forced integration in Macon County and all over Alabama. 

These brief excerpts provide deep insight into the situations of the Shorter School that preceded Dale’s experience there.  It was doing significant work for poor white students, and I will develop that theme in these essays, based on my personal experience.

 

 

19) The School Bus

Wade and I both started school while living at the little house.  Wade started in 1944, and I started in 1948.  I will tell more about the school experience when I get to that topic.  In this essay, I want to focus on the school bus.  The school bus that picked us up travelled dusty roads all over the west end of Macon County to pick up rural white kids.  There were three buses that served the Shorter public school, and they were “named” for the communities where their odysseys began.  There was the Chesson bus and the Hardaway bus in addition to our own Milstead bus.

The Milstead bus came down the two lane drive all the way from “the big road” to the little house to pick us up.  It turned around in the front yard of the little house, and that’s where we got on.  There was a big mudhole in the road about fifty yards in front of the little house, and I remember at least one time that the bus got stuck.  By then, Daddy and Uncle Earl had bought a Super A Farmall Tractor.  It was small.  Some of the boys on the bus didn’t think it would pull the bus out!  It was a proud moment for Wade and me when the little tractor pulled the bus right out!  Getting on that bus for the first time probably began the most important journey of my life!  Looking back, I realize that the Macon County Board of Education and the Shorter public school were doing mission work into abject poverty, although all I knew at the time was that I was starting to school, and I didn’t much like it.

Mr. Mortie Pierce drove the Milstead bus.  His wife, Mrs. Rossie Pierce taught first and second grades. The other two bus drivers, Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Johnson, both worked in the cafeteria–the only two lunchroom employees.  Mrs. Pierce drove their car to school, and Mr. Mortie could go home in it, and then return in the afternoon to drive the bus, and she could go home in the car. Mr Mortie and Ms. Rossie lived in the Milstead community, which was where the Little House was located.  Our address was Rt. 1, Box 45, Milstead, Ala., but the “mail man” knew everybody and where they lived, so a lot of mail just came RFD Milstead.  Unlike the school bus the mail was delivered to a box on “the big road” and someone had to walk a half mile to get it.  But that is another story.  As I have mentioned elsewhere, Daddy had been a bus driver, and had furnished his own bus.  That’s how he met Mama.  She was a student and had recently moved to Macon County from Shades Mountain, near Birmingham, in Jefferson County.  But Daddy’s bus had been disassembled, and the “bus body” as we called it, had become a place to raise chickens.  By the time we started to school, the county Board of Education furnished the bus, and Mr. Mortie drove the backroads, whistling “Little Rosewood Casket” or “Uncloudy Day,” picking up kids.

20) Starting to School

In September 1948, there was a huge change in my life.  The preschool days of playing long days year-round at the Little House came to and end.  The big yellow school bus drove up in front of the house, and I got on.  I would be getting on a bus, except for summer vacations, for the next 12 years.  I can’t say that I really liked the idea at the time.  But I did it, and it apparently worked.  Almost 12 years later, I gave a bit of an account of that day in an essay that I wrote just before graduating from high school.  I kept the paper, rewrote it for freshman English at Huntingdon College, calling it “Two Days With the Three R’s.”  Bill Head, a senior, was editor of the Prelude, a school publication.  He  was visiting in my room, saw the paper, enjoyed it, and published it in the prelude!  My first time in print!  Well, I still have it, and here it is:

                Alpha and Omega

                What is this thing called time?  The only time that I can be sure of is now; the only things are the ones that I can touch, see, hear, taste or feel.

                I remember that lazy, hazy autumn day as I remember dreams.  It was a day in early September, when corn stalks dry quickly, and the sun is still hot, and the sky is all blue, and there is a haze above the trees along the horizon.  Doubtless, there had been thousands of days nearly like that day before, but not exactly like it.  You see, that was the day that I started to school.

                Now on days like that, one’s Mama is usually his best friend.  I guess having a big brother does help some, but it’s Mama who knows all the old folks, and knows who to talk to, and tells you where to go, and why you’d better stay.

                Mama and I rode the bus to school that morning, and, Wade did too.  We didn’t have any car, but that didn’t cramp our style.  Away we went, lickity-split, over bridge, bump, dog, mud hole, chicken, and anything else that had the misfortune to be in the road at the time.  We occasionally collected a sign or mailbox that was “too close to the road anyhow.”

                But we finally reached the school that morning as I have many days therafter, without an accident.  Then suddenly, I found myself, due mainly to Mama’s know-how, situated and “orientated” enraptured and possibly captured.

                I knew I was in for trouble.  She (Mrs. Pierce, our teacher) didn’t give us any hard stuff then, but she said that we were going to learn reading and writing and arithmetic and the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm and I don’t know what all else and we did, too, but not that day.

                But everything was going too smoothly.  There were lots of other people around me, but I didn’t trust them because I didn’t know them.  Then said I unto me, ”I will look unto Mama, from whence cometh my help.”  But when I looked, she was gone.  So, there I sat, too scared to holler and too big to cry.

                Now, don’t misunderstand me.  I haven’t graduated yet, but I have seen this thing called graduations, working like a giant meat-shear, fall eleven times, so I know how it works.  And it’s just two weeks until I am in the last slice on the other side of the blade.

                There will be the Baccalaureate, then there will be the senior trip (oh boy) and then there I will stand, mortar-board and all, getting my walking papers.  Then, to that to which I was grafted, and to which I grew, I will be a memory.  I, not it, will be a memory.

                Then I won’t be too scared to holler, or too big to cry.

It is intriguing how some of the thoughts that have found their way into some of my serious philosophical writing on this website were already beginning to form.  The eternal NOW; the question of physicality and the senses.

1.33 A Story About Schools

Public education was and is the great American dream. Nevertheless, since the 1950s, we have seen a broad-based movement toward the privatization of education. It is against this background that I tell my story. Stephen Covey who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People suggested that one of those habits is “keeping the main thing the main thing.” For a public education system, excellent, effective education is the main thing.

I was born in rural Macon County and attended Shorter High School, a public school for grades one through twelve. There were fewer than 100 students in all 12 grades. There were 9 members of my 1960 graduating class. I used to say that there were 5 basketball players and four cheerleaders, but that may not be politically correct!

Mrs. Steele Bibb was our principal and was a Huntingdon College graduate. Four members of my graduating class, including Betty Menefee, who would later become my wife, signed up to attend Huntingdon. When I almost backed out because of fear of the tuition (they were charging and almost $1000 a year!), I was recruited by Coach Neal Posey. I suspect that he knew that I could not basketball that well, but also knew my ACT score. Mrs. Bibb knew I liked basketball, and probably “recruited” Neal Posey.  Shorter High School provided excellent education. An amazing percentage of graduates attended college. But soon after my graduation, the case of Lee v. Macon, that desegregated the Alabama Public schools, made Macon County the battleground between the politics of Gov. George Wallace and power of Judge Frank Johnson, neither of whom was an educator.

I had a good academic record at Huntingdon and served as president of the Student Government Association five years after John Ed Matheson, and five years before Jeff sessions. I was easily accepted into the University of Alabama Law School.  I was one of the first Huntingdon graduates to attend law school, although there have been many since then. The foundation that the Shorter school provided passed every test. 

I returned to Montgomery to practice law.  After a couple of years living in Montgomery, I moved back to Macon County in 1970, in the opposite direction from the “white flight” that was generally occurring.  I continued practicing law in Montgomery. The public school system in Macon County was no longer the same.  Our children, Philip and Mike, attended the Montgomery Academy.  In 1982, I was elected Circuit Judge in Alabama’s Fifth Judicial Circuit, which includes Macon County, where I served for 18 years.

My brother Wade had graduated from Shorter High School in 1956. He attended Troy State Teachers College and got a degree in education. He was hired to teach at the newly formed Montgomery Academy, a private school with emphasis on college preparation. Wade taught mathematics. He continued pursuing his education and got a Master’s degree in education at the University of Alabama.

After teaching at the Montgomery Academy for a number of years and serving as an interim headmaster, he was appointed Headmaster at the Montgomery Academy. He was influential in hiring Mrs. Duke and Mrs. Jolly who had taught both of us at Shorter High School. They taught at the Montgomery Academy for several years. 

My son, Philip, graduated from the Montgomery Academy in 1985, in a class of 40 and was included among eight National Merit finalists in that class. A very bright black student from Macon County was also in that class and several others were enrolled at the Academy.  In 1986 we moved to Tallassee and Mike completed his education in the public school.  Philip now practices intellectual property law in Chicago, and Mike practices law with me in Tallassee.  This is my story.

Without question, much social progress was made by the changes in public education that have occurred since 1960. But something very important was lost. Our governments did not keep the main thing the main thing. Everyone would have been better off if they had.

Today is a new day. We must find ways to rehabilitate the dream of excellence in public education. Privatized education can never reach the talented intellects that are mired in poverty and other disadvantages.  Excellent, effective, free public education is still the great equalizer. But the education system (like the army?) must offer the opportunity to everyone to be all that they can be.  “No child held back” is just as important as “no child left behind.”  We can only renew the dream of universal excellent public education by making the main thing the main thing.