‘Miss Doris’ made English fun in the 50s

Like many youngsters I bought, read, and traded comic books. I had a big box full of them.

During the times I was on the farm, I was away from my friends and classmates.

Comic books and the World Book Encyclopedia became my salvation from loneliness and depression during slow times on the farm.

It’s hard to imagine there are still some people in the United States who still can’t read or write. I have no idea when I learned to read.

I sincerely hope someone will continue the great literacy work done by the late Barbara Bush.

In the early 50s due to retirements and marriages, little old Aycock had to make some teacher changes.

Miss Doris Whitaker became the new English teacher. I think she was fresh out of college.

She may have been only two or three years older than some of her students. For a couple I knew, maybe not even that much older.

When I was in the seventh or eighth grade she introduced my class to the works Poe, Keats, Whitman, Tennyson and the like.

I wrote a lot of poems back then. I discarded them for fear of being labeled a sissy. It was during this period I became hooked on literature.

In the ninth grade, Miss Whitaker was the teacher I asked for help in learning to type. Aycock at that time had only one typewriter. It was used mainly in the office and teachers used it to type out their test papers. I had to purchase my own typewriter before she would agree to teach me.

It was only a few weeks after I started typing that typewriters seemed to appear out of thin air and a typing class was started by Mrs. Sansom.

Somehow I managed to do well enough in school to become salutatorian of my graduating class. (I used to tell my kids I achieved that distinction because there were only two students in my graduating class).

As such, I was to write the speech I had to make for the graduation ceremony. With me being the proverbial procrastinator, I managed to write it about three days before the event. My Mom was on pins and needles.

While speaking, it was such a relief to look down from the podium from time to time, and see Miss Whitaker’s (by then she became Mrs. Goolsbye) smiling face of encouragement.

Somehow, I have never been able to get onomatopoeia— the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named—out of my mind. With letting us know about how syncopated rhythm worked in the process of making some jingles, Miss Whitaker made English fun and interesting for me.