MEMORIES OF HALLMARK SCHOOL,
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
By Ronald James Caldwell, Ph.D.
Professor of History, Emeritus,
Jacksonville State University,
Jacksonville Alabama
ronaldcaldwell1210@gmail.com
March 7, 2019
Dedicated to the memory
of Miss Emma Louise
Hartman,
Principal of Hallmark
School, 1939-1964
Hallmark School, August 2008.
The George S. Hallmark School, 115 south E Street, Pensacola, Florida, was demolished in 2017, to make way for a housing development. The building is no more but the school lives on in the hearts and minds of the thousands of people like me whose lives were transformed by it. We must not let the memory of this great place disappear. The following is my part in the endeavor to keep Hallmark School alive forever. This is my research on and my experiences in this school.
The George S. Hallmark School, 115 south E Street, Pensacola, Florida, was demolished in 2017, to make way for a housing development. The building is no more but the school lives on in the hearts and minds of the thousands of people like me whose lives were transformed by it. We must not let the memory of this great place disappear. The following is my part in the endeavor to keep Hallmark School alive forever. This is my research on and my experiences in this school.
____________________________________
My mother walked me to Hallmark
School on that hot and sunny day in early September of 1949. I was so excited I
could hardly contain myself. All forty-eight pounds of me felt as if I were the
biggest boy in the world getting to go to the First Grade. I had not gone to
kindergarten the way some of my little friends had. Kindergarten cost money in
those days and my father’s policeman’s salary did not stretch far beyond the
basic needs of six people. So here I was in my new clothes and new sneakers off
to school and the great big wonderful world I knew it would bring. When we
arrived at the north side of the school, we stopped on the sidewalk and I said
to mother, “Now you stay here” (meaning, I did not want to be seen with my
mother walking me through the door). Little, skinny six-year-old boy that I was, I
wanted to be independent. She smiled and watched me walk eagerly to the north
door then took my picture. I turned and entered what would be six years in
wonderland. In so many ways these were to be the best years of my life, they
certainly were the most important years of my long education.
After Hallmark, I went on to Blount
Junior High School, a few blocks away. It has also been demolished. After that
I went on to Pensacola High School and then to Pensacola Junior College. Then I
traveled to Tallahassee to enter Florida State University where I earned a
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Education and a Ph.D. in History. Upon
finishing there, I started a teaching career at Jacksonville State University,
in Jacksonville, Alabama. I am now Professor of History, Emeritus, of
Jacksonville State University. My long and full life in education all started
on that sunny September day in 1949 when I walked through the north door of the
George S. Hallmark Elementary School. It was a wonderful beginning.
A HISTORY OF HALLMARK
SCHOOL
From the time the Spaniards left,
in 1821, to the Civil War period, Pensacola remained a small, relatively poor
and unimportant town, really a rather rough village of some 2,000 people. It
was, as it had always been basically a military outpost given its strategic
position and finest deep-water harbor on the central coast of the Gulf of
Mexico. The Spaniards claimed all of Florida, then made a settlement at
Pensacola (named either for a town in Spain or a local Indian tribe) in 1559,
quickly left, and returned in 1698 to build Fort San Carlos de Austria at the
mouth of Pensacola Bay mainly to plant the flag and keep the French, who were
moving eastward along the Gulf coast, from infringing on Spanish claims to Florida.
When Spain transferred Florida to the United States in 1821, the Americans
found Pensacola Bay to be an excellent place for a Navy yard.
After the Civil War, Pensacola
became a transportation hub as maritime trade escalated and railroads connected
the town eastward, westward, and northward. The great Pensacola boom was from
1880 to 1920. From 6,845 people in 1880, Pensacola swelled to 11,750 in 1890,
17,747 in 1900, 22,982 in 1910, and 31,035 in 1920. The new arrivals were
mostly rural and small-town people from northwest Florida, south Alabama,
southwest Georgia, and southeast Mississippi driven from home by low
agricultural prices. Thus, in the four decades from 1880 to 1920, Pensacola exploded
from a small town into an important and sizeable city with four times the
population. What underlay this boom, primarily, was the lumber trade. After the
Civil War and the expansion of a good railroad network, millions of acres of
virgin forest lands were opened up in northwest Florida and south Alabama, all
with access to export from Pensacola. Lumber companies moved in, even into
remote areas to harvest the old growth trees, mostly pines. Hungry markets in
the north and overseas swallowed up the good, plentiful and relatively cheap
timber shipped out by boat and rail. At the height of the boom, Pensacola
harbor was thick with ships of all descriptions loading up with countless feet
of sawmilled lumber. Money poured into the city along with people to take
advantage of the economic good times.
The golden age of Pensacola produced
a building boom in the city, notably from 1900 to 1920: new Christ Church,
Blount Building, American National Bank Building, City Hall, Hotel San Carlos, Thiessen
Building, First Methodist Church, L & N Depot, old Sacred Heart Hospital, and
the High School (1921). In honor of the town’s Spanish heritage, many of the
new buildings featured Spanish, Mediterranean, or Renaissance Revival styles:
e.g., new Christ Church, city hall, the L&N depot. This gave Pensacola a
certain Old World flavor, similar, but on a smaller scale, to nearby New
Orleans and Mobile.
Pensacola was on a roll. However,
as is so often true with booms, the good days would not last. Once the forests
had been largely depleted, the trade and the money dwindled. The great boom
ended in the 1920s. While population continued to grow, the rate was far slower
than it had been. After the end of the timber boom, Pensacola largely fell back
on its military heritage as army and navy posts multiplied in its environs. It
helped a great deal that in the First World War era, the Navy established the
naval flight training school at the Pensacola Naval Air Station where it
remains. All navy pilots earn their wings in Pensacola.
The city struggled to provide
education for the flood of incoming residents. Soon after the Civil War, the
Board of Public Instruction began setting up public schools. In 1898, a school
appeared in the record called Public School Number 74, located on east Government
Street. It proved to be wholly inadequate. Two years later, in 1900, the school
board built a new School Number 74 on the south side of Garden Street, between
Spring and Reus streets. The Pensacola
News (Oct. 22, 1900) described it as “One of the most convenient and
complete structures of its class in the city.” It sat on a lot of 200 by 300
feet. This four-grade school building, built by F.M. Williams, had four
classrooms, First and Second grades on the first floor, and Third and Fourth
grades on the second. Each room had windows on three sides. There were four
teachers, one for each grade. Great
improvement that the school was, it was already barely adequate for the 192
children who lined up for school on the first day. That meant 40-50 children
crowding into each of the four classrooms. The crowding only worsened.
Between 1900 and 1920, Pensacola’s
population ballooned from 17,747 to 31,035. The hard-pressed school board could
hardly keep up with the demand for space in the over-crowded schools. Meanwhile
the west side of Pensacola was quickly developing as the industrial,
working-class part of the city, thanks in large measure to naval stores plants
and the arrival of the Frisco (St. Louis and San Francisco) Railroad. The
Frisco built a passenger station on west Garden St. in the 1920s (since
demolished). The L & N (Louisville and Nashville) R.R. served the north and
east of the town. The opening of Joseph B. Lockey Grammar School in 1916
(Blount Junior High after 1937), at 113 north C Street, seemed to do little to
alleviate the school crisis on the booming west side. The school board knew
something had to be done and soon to provide more classrooms for the burgeoning
population in the two-mile stretch westward from Palafox St. to Bayou Chico that
was composed largely of industrial workers, laborers, mechanics, clerks,
drivers, policemen, nurses, shopkeepers, salesmen, commercial fishermen and the
like.
Meanwhile, in 1919, the board renamed School Number 74, the George S. [Stone] Hallmark School even as it was obvious the building was far from adequate to meet the needs of the area’s population. George S. Hallmark (1846-1906) was a prominent local judge, civic leader, vestryman of Christ Church and member of the school board. By 1925, the board decided the four-room school building could not be improved and expanded enough in its rather small lot on Garden St (where the building that used to house the administrative offices of the school board now stands). They resolved to explore selling the building and constructing a new school for the children of the westside somewhere else nearby but with plenty of space.
In 1925, at the height of the
Florida land boom, the school board debated selling the Garden Street school
property to Abe Durschlag, of Chicago, for a total of $60,000, $15,000 in a
down payment, the balance in yearly payments at 7% interest. There was lively
discussion among the board members about this. Some said the board had no money
to build new schools, and this deal would not provide new funds in timely
fashion. Nevertheless, the deal went through. The buyer agreed to rent the
present school building to the board for one year at $2,000. (The deal failed. In
early 1928, Durschlag returned the deed to the board. He made the down payment
of $15,000 then defaulted on the annual payments. The April 4, 1928 Pensacola Journal reported that the
board was accepting a new offer of $40,000, from B.F. Yoakum, of Chicago. The
new deal would mean the board would lose $7,000 on the original deal.)
The board considered several sites
on the west side of downtown and finally decided on a city block bounded by E
St., F St., Romana St., and Intendencia St. at a cost of $10,000. The land was
secured by January of 1927. The site was approximately half way between Palafox
Street and the western city limit at Bayou Chico. Apparently, many people were
unhappy with the new site and opposition to it began to grow. Several new
construction projects, including new Hallmark, were estimated to cost $200,000,
money the school board did not have. To raise the funds for the new
construction projects, the board proposed to offer $225,000 in public bonds at
6% interest. They got the influential P.T.A. network to back them, but still
found opposition to incurring this heavy debt. To win over support for the
controversial site and the whole scheme, the board purchased another city block
for the new school bringing the site south to Government Street (new Hallmark
School was to occupy five acres of land, an unusually large space for a city
public school). Apparently, this worked to win over public support for the new
site. In a referendum in 1927, the voters approved of the sale of the bonds.
This gave the board the necessary funds for Hallmark’s construction, on the
site chosen.
The board acted immediately to have
the new school ready for the start of the school year in September of 1928. In
the summer of 1927, local architect Walker D. Willis, with office at 517 Blount
Building, drew up the plans for the new nineteen-room George S. Hallmark
School. It was to be built on the northern city lot with the southern lot left
as a playground. It was to look eastward, toward the city center, and face E
St. with its north side on Romana St. Willis had also designed the J.B. Lockey
School and the Pensacola High School, on the east side of Lee Square, which
opened in 1921. On September 20, 1927, the board advertised for sealed bids for
the construction of the new Hallmark School to be submitted by October 13,
1927.
On October 14, 1927, the board
announced that it had awarded the contract to the lowest of the ten bidders,
the Herrington Brothers Construction Company. Their bid was $66,032.23. Charles
A. Born won the plumbing contract at $11,437, and Woodward Electric Company got
the electrical job at $1,888. The whole construction of new Hallmark School was
to total slightly less than $80,000. Work began immediately. It was just ten
and a half months before school was to start in September of 1928.
By the spring of 1928, work on the
new school seemed to be progressing well. In April, Jeff Herrington reported
that the building should be finished on time. He also remarked that the type of
(yellow) brick being used was in short supply as it was in demand for other
construction. The newspaper reported “Contractors of the city have praised the
brick work being done on the building.” (Pensacola
Journal, April 16, 1928). Photos of the demolition show that the walls were
about a foot thick of solid brick formation. It was a structure built to last.
It has survived many a hurricane.
Herrington may have been pleased
with the progress, but the school board was not. In May of 1928, they charged
him with “demurrage,” that is, falling behind on the terms of the contract, for
which the contractor could pay a penalty. The board sent a letter urging the
hiring of extra workmen and asking for a report on the new workers hired. The
board was afraid the building would not be finished in time for school to begin
in September. Apparently, Herrington got the message. Shortly thereafter, he
told the board the work would be finished by July 15 (it was not). In August, a
strange incident occurred. Workmen arrived one morning to find a room on fire.
They called the fire department which extinguished the blaze before it could
spread to other rooms. The cause of the fire was never discovered. The building
was ready for teachers and students in September of 1928 and the first year of
the new George S. Hallmark school began.
Hallmark School in 1928 or 1929
New Hallmark School was the pride
of the west side of Pensacola. It was by far the most important public building
west of downtown. The architect Willis really outdid himself in the artistic
charm of the building, far surpassing the larger but plainer Pensacola High
School. The building is listed as “Renaissance Revival” architecture, but I
always thought of it as “Spanish.” It had an impressive front entrance, a
recessed door in the middle of three arches supported by columns. Above were
three rounded iron balconies and windows topped by decorative work displaying
“H” in the middle and topped by an art deco finial. Pinnacles punctuated the
red tile roof edging (actually, the building was flat-topped). At the two ends
of the front were iron balconies in walls topped by more decorative work. The structure
contained nineteen rooms in all plus two small offices flanking the front door,
one for the principal and one for the nurse. There were three classrooms for each
grade One to Six, grades One to Three on the first floor, and Four to Six on
the second floor. At its highest enrollment, in the 1950s, the school housed
over 600 students, eighteen teachers, one librarian, one principal, one
secretary, one janitor, and several lunchroom workers.
The building itself was very
substantial. It survived many hurricanes and storms in its life from 1928 to
2017, with Ivan in 2004 being the worst. Its foot-thick walls were solid yellow
brick. The floors were hardwood as were the two broad stair cases, at the ends
of the building. The spacious interior had a simple elegance. The doors to the
classrooms were glass-paned so that one did not have to open the door to see
inside the room. On the back side, in the middle, there was an iron fire escape
stairway from the second floor. Just beyond was a separate maintenance room
where the janitor had his headquarters. The original building had a lunch room,
as I recall, a double room on the west side of the first floor. When I was in
the First Grade, we students went through the line putting on our trays the
meals and a small bottle of milk, the kind with the cream on the top. We took
the tray back to our rooms and ate. The trick was to get the tray both ways
without tipping over the bottle. Some of us did not succeed, much to Miss
Hartman’s chagrin.
In 1950, a cafeteria/auditorium was
built as a separate structure connected to the northwest corner of the building
by an enclosed walkway with a rolled-up metal fire door at the entrance. When I
entered the Second Grade (Sept. 1950), all students went in shifts to each
lunch on tables set up in the auditorium. When necessary, the tables were
stacked away and folding chairs set up facing the stage for assembles and
performances. The stage had a curtain topped by a large golden “H.” (The
original curtain was still there when the building was demolished.) Another
outbuilding was built, a new media center, or library, in 1999-2000. After the
cafetorium was built in 1950, the old lunchroom space became the library of the
school.
On the two city blocks, the
building(s) stood on the north. The south was left in its natural state as a
“playground.” At some point, early on, Intendencia Street, which would have
separated the two blocks, was closed off and the two parts of the school ground
became one long block. This gave ample open area for games and recreation.
Toward the far southern end, on Government St., the pine trees became more
numerous. Some were old and large. On the west side near F St. stood an ancient
live oak tree whose enormous spreading limbs provided much sought-after shade
from the hot sun (also good for climbing). In the 1940s and 50s a large
sycamore tree stood on the back side of the building near the fire escape.
Along with the remarkable building,
Hallmark School was fortunate to have a remarkable faculty. Some of these
teachers devoted decades of their lives to the school. A few spent their entire
teaching careers at Hallmark. In the five decades from 1913 to 1964, there were
only two principals, Mary Eulalie (called Allie) Yniestra (1913-1939) and Emma Hartman (1939-1964).
Allie Yniestra’s father was Moses
Gale Yniestra, born in 1837, in Pensacola. He married Anna Elizabeth Gause on
May 21, 1860, in Mobile, AL. Allie was the first of eight girls born to the
Yniestras. She arrived in March of 1861. Moses served in the Confederate army;
and, after the war moved from Greenville AL back to Pensacola to become the
superintendent of the gas works. When Moses was killed in a railroad accident
in 1884, Anna Yniestra was left with eight daughters to support, ages 23 to 6.
Although we do not know from the record, we might imagine the oldest, Allie,
had to assume a great deal of responsibility for the support of this large
household. We do know that for many years, her mother operated a boarding house
at 229 North Spring St. Allie never married and after her mother’s death in
1914, she and her sister Bessie continued living in the house.
The first record of Allie Yniestra
as a teacher in Pensacola appeared in 1899 when she was thirty-eight years old.
She was paid $30/month (this was about half the average wage of a working class
man at the time). The next year, she got a raise to $45/month. From at least
1905 to 1913, she taught at School Number Two, in Pensacola. In February of
1913, Yniestra was named principal of School Number 74 at a salary of $50/month.
The next year she got a raise to $65/month. While she was principal, the school
was renamed for George S. Hallmark and was moved to its new building in 1928.
She was a firm believer in the Parent Teacher Association and saw to it that
Hallmark had a large and outstanding PTA. In the fall of 1928 between 200 and
300 proud mothers and fathers crowded into the first PTA meeting in the splendid
new school. It was said she was also a strict disciplinarian who walked around
with a palmetto switch and did not hesitate to use it. She was also a very
resourceful person with a kind and generous side. In the Great Depression of
the 1930s, when so many children went hungry, Yniestra saw to it that her lunch
room served everyone. She kept this quiet and today no one knows how she managed
to do this. She was also known to work with the room mothers to collect food
and clothing and distribute such to the “disadvantaged families” of her school,
which on the west side of town was more than a few. Apparently, she was such an
outstanding educator that the school board named a school for her while she was
in the middle of her career. The Allie Yniestra School, on west Jackson Street,
served a growing population in the Brownsville area until it too was closed in
2011. That building has been preserved and is reportedly being converted into
medical offices. Allie Yniestra retired from her remarkable teaching career in
1939, at age seventy-eight, and moved to St. Petersburg, FL to live with a
nephew. She died there in 1941. Her funeral was on March 11, 1941, at St. Michael's Catholic Church, Pensacola; and she was buried in the St. Michael's cemetery.
Emma Louise Hartman was born on
January 17, 1904, in Pensacola. Her parents had married in 1890 in the (German)
Lutheran Church, in Pensacola. According to the U.S. Census of 1910, her father
owned a bakery, and there were nine children in the household, fourteen
residents in all. Her father, Charles, was born in Alabama, her mother,
Elizabeth Greuninger, in Indiana. All four grandparents were born in Germany. The Hartmans were devoted members of Immanuel
Lutheran Church to which Emma had a lifelong attachment. In 1920, when she was sixteen, this large
family lived at 300 West Zaragossa Street (the 100 block was the red-light
district). This was the south side of the block on which Hallmark School was
located. She graduated from high school at sixteen, and, as she said later,
originally wanted to be a nurse but her mother discouraged her on the idea
nursing was too menial. At that time young women were limited on job choices:
nurse, teacher, secretary, clerk. Emma decided on teaching. In those days one
did not need a college education to teach but could get certified by
examination. Emma took the test for teacher certification, passed, and began
teaching at George S. Hallmark School in September of 1920, as the First Grade
teacher. Upon starting work, she earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from
the Florida State College for Women (now Florida State University) by attending
summer classes. In the 1920s, the large Hartman family moved to 1102 East
Gadsden Street. Emma’s father Charles died in 1933. In the Census of 1940, Emma
was listed as the head of the household which included two brothers and three
sisters, still living on Gadsden St. Emma never married.
“Miss Hartman” as I and everyone
else called her followed her mentor and role model, Allie Yniestra. She too put
great emphasis on the P.T.A. and always managed to have large meetings and
active programs. My parents were sometimes officers of the group. And, she too
was a stern and strict disciplinarian. One should remember that these were the
days of corporal punishment. The worst thing that could happen to a student was
to be sent to Miss Hartman’s office. It meant a rough time. She tolerated no
nonsense. Fortunately, I was never sent to her for discipline but I did have a
visit to her office once that did not go well. At about the age of ten, a
friend and I decided it would be a good idea to pencil in moustaches on our
faces. We though it was a fun idea, and so we did. Unfortunately, I had to go
to Miss Hartman’s office for something. When she took one look at me, instead
of bursting out laughing as anyone else would have, she scowled, got up, wet
her thumb and proceeded to rub my skin raw until the moustache was gone. I have
blotted out from memory the few choice words she uttered as she sent me away. Miss
Hartman cared enough for me that she did not want me to go around looking like a
fool.
In spite of her stern demeanor, I
always suspected Miss Hartman had a good and soft heart beneath it all. She
just did not want to show it for fear of losing her authority. I never saw her
smile let alone display any sense of humor. She really was a rather small and
shy person who hated public speaking and avoided it when she could. Yet, she
loved children; she loved her job. To stay in the same school for forty-four
years, one would have to care a lot. Her
faculty and staff were devoted to her, some serving for decades under her iron-will
leadership. I cannot say the children loved her, but they respected her and
what she was doing to provide them good educations, and that really was what
was important. I look back now and marvel at the great job she did for us, even
for the low salary that she was paid. Miss Hartman ran a tight ship. She did it
for us and we were the beneficiaries. She retired in 1964, after twenty-five
years as the principal. Emma Hartman died on December 15, 1987, at the age of
eighty-three and was buried in the St. John’s cemetery, Pensacola. He tombstone
bears the inscription, “Faithful to the end.” Truer words were never spoken.
The Pensacola News-Journal, April 14, 1964 published this photo of
Miss Hartman upon her retirement. I saw her daily for six school years and
never saw her smile.
Next to Allie Yniestra and Emma
Hartman, the best-known faculty of Hallmark School were the Oliver sisters,
Edith and Eulalie, granddaughters of George S. Hallmark. They were very proud
of that and would tell you so on any occasion. Edith Hallmark Oliver was born on
September 23, 1893, in Pensacola to Arthur Oliver and Lelia Hallmark Oliver,
living at 15 West Garden St. Arthur was a clerk. Lelia was born on November 29,
1873 to George S. Hallmark and Lelia Hallmark. Edith Oliver was graduated from
the high school in 1911 and was hired the same year as a permanent substitute
teacher. She took summer classes at the Florida State College for Women. The
next year, 1912, she was hired as a teacher at Public School Number 27 at
$50/month. She was there for several years then at the Sabra Collins School, at
Bayou Chico. By 1926 she was on the faculty of Hallmark School along with her
sister Eulalie. Edith taught Second Grade at Hallmark from 1926 until she
retired in or about 1958, a remarkable 47-year career in teaching, 32 of them
at Hallmark. Edith Oliver died on June 5, 1974 and was buried in the St. John’s
Cemetery.
Eulalie Oliver was born in May of
1900 to Arthur and Lelia Oliver. She began at Hallmark in 1926, the same year
as Edith and taught Third Grade for thirty-two years, until her retirement in
1958. The picture is from the Pensacola
Hews-Journal of April 29, 1988. Eulalie Oliver died on November 6, 1989 and
is buried in St. John’s Cemetery.
Miss Julia Lee Cooey
was another long-time teacher at Hallmark. She was born in Westville in 1895,
and moved to Pensacola in 1922. She joined the faculty of Hallmark School in
1924 and taught First Grade for about forty years. She died in March of 1970 at
age seventy-five. Miss Barbara Muriel Dillard was another long-time teacher at the
school, serving from 1930 to 1967. She was at Cordova Park Elementary School
from 1967 until her retirement in 1976. She died on February 15, 1994. Yet
another long-serving teacher was Mrs. Miriam Windham Pfeiffer. She started
teaching at Hallmark in 1928 and taught Third Grade until around 1960. She died
on February 22, 1974, at age seventy-seven. Yet another was Mrs. Lucile P.
Gonzalez. She first taught at Allie Yniestra School in the 1930s, and then at
Hallmark for about twenty-five years as Fourth Grade teacher from the mid-1940s
to perhaps the early 1960s. Mrs. Gonzalez died on October 27, 2004, at the age
of 103. Mrs. Frances L. McKenzie taught at Hallmark from the late 1930s to 1954
(she was principal of Turner Lee Day School 1954-1961 and Montclair Elementary
School 1961 to late 1970s). She died on Oct. 16, 1992 at the age of 81. Mrs.
Marie MacArthur taught Sixth Grade from 1946 to 1971. She died on January 24,
1987, age eighty-two. In 1980, she was Volunteer of the Year, and the News-Journal of May 13 published her
picture.
Miss Catherine Adams taught sixth grade at Hallmark from 1929 to 1966.
After she retired she taught for several years at St. Stephen’s Catholic
School. She died on February 18,1987, aged eighty-four. Mrs. Forest A. (Grace
M.) Wheeler taught First Grade at Hallmark from 1929 to 1950. She died on May
3, 1980, aged eighty-five. In addition, many other teachers gave years of devoted
service to Hallmark School. None of these devoted teachers should be forgotten.
Their names should be honored forever.
It
is remarkable that so many women devoted their lives to teaching, and often in
the same school for years on end, and did so for meager salaries. As we have
seen, the going pay for a teacher around 1900 was about $40/month. At nine
months, that would amount to $360/year. At the time, the average wage of a
working man in America was $500/year. In 1946, the base salary for a teacher in
Escambia County was $1,764/yr., with four-year college graduates starting at
$2,850/yr. By 1955, the salary of a college graduate with ten years’ experience
was only $3,700/year. In 2018, the base salary in the county schools was
$37,000/yr., barely a living wage. Public school teachers have always been, and
still are underpaid in Escambia County FL.
MY MEMORIES OF HALLMARK SCHOOL
These are my memories of my time at
Hallmark School as they are in mind now, at age seventy-five, in 2018-2019.
They are abundant, overwhelmingly pleasant, and after all these years, fresh in
mind. I have always been blessed with a good memory, something that served me
very well as a student of history. I attended Hallmark School from the start of
First Grade in September of 1949 to the end of Sixth Grade in June of 1955. The
school day began with the first bell, at 8:30 a.m. and ended with the last
bell, at 3:00 p.m. Only if it were raining could we enter the building before
the first bell.
In First Grade, I was introduced to
numbers and letters. I was fascinated but unprepared as I remained only average
in grades, straight “C’s.” I was a shy, insecure, slow starter. I recall
printing and writing letters on First Grade paper, with the two lines and the
dashes in the middle. We spent a lot of time and effort writing cursive letters
large and small making the figures just right over and over. It was an art form
and I was good at it. Unfortunately, handwriting has all but disappeared from
schools. I also learned how to read by seeing repetitive words in my “Alice and
Jerry” readers. I was hooked on books. I made good friends, my best buddy being
Walter whom I remember with red hair and freckles. What stands out the most
about First Grade was that my teacher, Mrs. Ruby Ward, suddenly disappeared one
day and we were told she was going to be gone for some time. Several months
later she reappeared one day with a baby in her arms. Apparently, in those days
a married woman could teach until she started showing pregnancy. Near the end
of my First Grade year, in the spring of 1950, Hallmark put on the last one of its
May Day festivals. A short wooden platform was set up in an open area on the
west (back) side of the school and on one bright, hot day, I suppose at the first
of May, the queen of the May was crowned as children twined ribbons around a
Maypole. We played games and had all sorts of treats as refreshments. I
remember chocolate covered ice cream on a stick. It was a bright, sunny, and
glorious day.
My Second Grade teacher, Miss Edith
Oliver, was the most important and influential teacher I had at Hallmark. I regarded
the Oliver sisters as the epitome of ladies: genteel, dignified, always
perfectly dressed and coiffed, kind and generous. On any given Saturday, three
Oliver sisters could be seen majestically strolling down Palafox Street dressed
to the nines with hat and gloves and eager to stop and talk with the many
friends, students, and parents they encountered. They had a way of making every
child feel he or she was the most important one. Edith was slightly plump, with
a round face and full lips. She had a very sweet and pleasant disposition. All
children seemed to love her and she loved them.
The three Oliver sisters on their way to Christ Church, in 1955. Edith (L), Minnie (M), and Eulalie (R). This photo is courtesy of the little girl, a niece, Michelle Hallmark Oliver Llewellyn.
The year did not start well for me, however. On the first day of class I took my desk near the middle of the room so excited and thrilled to be starting another year. As she was telling us what we should bring to school, she spied my desk, walked over to me and held up my notebook and told the class not to bring this. It was a stenographer’s pad. All the children looked at me as if I were stupid. I began to cry. Miss Oliver was taken aback and quickly went on to something else. For the rest of the year, it was as if she could not do enough for me. Of course, I loved all the attention, and I excelled in my work.
One time my doctor gave me huge iron pills to take to combat anemia. I could barely swallow them in the best of circumstances but could not manage leaning over the water fountain out in the hall. The pill fell out of my mouth every time. Miss Oliver saw my struggle, disappeared and instantly reappeared with a cup, filled it with water and handed it to me. She did not say a word. That was the kind of person she was.
The year did not start well for me, however. On the first day of class I took my desk near the middle of the room so excited and thrilled to be starting another year. As she was telling us what we should bring to school, she spied my desk, walked over to me and held up my notebook and told the class not to bring this. It was a stenographer’s pad. All the children looked at me as if I were stupid. I began to cry. Miss Oliver was taken aback and quickly went on to something else. For the rest of the year, it was as if she could not do enough for me. Of course, I loved all the attention, and I excelled in my work.
One time my doctor gave me huge iron pills to take to combat anemia. I could barely swallow them in the best of circumstances but could not manage leaning over the water fountain out in the hall. The pill fell out of my mouth every time. Miss Oliver saw my struggle, disappeared and instantly reappeared with a cup, filled it with water and handed it to me. She did not say a word. That was the kind of person she was.
Although I learned a great deal in
the Second Grade, what impressed me the most about Miss Oliver was her
introduction to the beauty of both nature and religion. On nature, she took the
class on walks around the five-acre school grounds and told us about the
various aspects of plant life (as why some plants stay green all years and some
not). Our spacious school yard was a good teaching tool for trees, shrubs,
flower and the like. All winter long, she kept a glass bowl on her desk full of
beautiful camellia blossoms from her yard. This was where I first started
developing a lifelong love of horticulture. Today I have a large botanical
garden that I designed and developed myself in the vacant lot adjacent to my
house. It has some 700 trees, shrubs, bulbs, vines, ground covers and the like.
And, yes, I have camellias, some two dozen bushes of varying kinds. Miss Oliver
would be so proud of my beautiful garden.
Concerning religion, Miss Oliver
was a practitioner of the well-known maxim, “Preach the Gospel, and use words
if necessary.” She was a woman of profound faith that she lived out rather than
talked out in her daily life. This was a far cry from the hell-fire-and-damnation
sermons I heard every Sunday at my family’s church. By her example, I learned
that religion should be the guiding light of how we live our lives on a daily
basis. It was not whether we were “saved” or “unsaved,” it was about how we incorporated
faith in our everyday lives. She talked to us often about the differences
between right and wrong behavior without ever preaching. She kept a Bible on
the corner of her desk and insisted that absolutely nothing should ever be put
on top of that book because of its supreme importance. If anyone forgot and put
something on top of her Bible, he or she got a stern rebuke. Every morning, she
started class with a Pledge of Allegiance, Bible reading, and the Lord’s
Prayer. This is where I memorized the Lord’s Prayer which was not recited at my
church. The Oliver sisters were devoted parishioners of Christ Church and the
epitome of Episcopalianism. By their examples, they started me thinking about
the connections between religion and daily life. Many years later, I decided
that their understanding of the role of religion in life was right. This goes
to show that teachers can have great influence over students, even those of
early age. I wish I could tell Edith Oliver today how much she influenced my
life, all for the better.
I did not understand it when I was
seven years old, and could not have articulated it, but it was in the Second
Grade that I first started becoming aware of different forces influencing my personal
life, three in particular: church, school, and popular culture. These were not
the same, in fact, often in conflict, or at least stark difference. In church I
learned a Manichean world view of warring dualities of the universe, God v.
Satan, good v. evil, heaven v. hell, saved v. unsaved, etc. This was a world of
intuition and emotion. It was also a view full of fear, foreboding, and
self-loathing. Through emotion we could
get to ecstasy but only after going through the depths of despair. In school, I
learned a vastly different world view, that the world was not necessarily a bad
place but could also be beautiful, wonderful, informative, and revealing. This
was a world of information and reason. Through reason we could get to higher
understanding of ourselves and the world around us which was both good and bad.
Then there was popular culture,
which for me, in the late 1940s and 1950s, meant cowboy movies on Saturdays at
the Rex Theater (the Rex is still there but closed). The Rex was the “B” movie
theater on Palafox St., and a ticket cost just thirty-nine cents. Roy Rogers,
Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, and many other heroes filled that big silver
screen. After I did my Saturday morning chores, my mother gave me a
seventy-five-cent allowance. With that, I could ride the city bus the two miles
to downtown and back (25 cents), buy popcorn and perhaps a coke, and see the
double feature at the Rex. I rode by myself on the bus after the age of six.
Bus # 13 ran by my house on its way between downtown and the Naval Air Station.
The cowboy movies were morality plays. Evil men (black hats) did bad things,
then good men (white hats) came along and defeated evil, vanquished the bad
guys and made the world right again. Every movie was a variation on the same
theme. By the time I left the theater, I knew my world would be right, but only
if I too did my part to defeat evil. The next day on Sunday, I was told that the
world was not right, that it could not be made right, that Satan would be
vanquished only in the next world. So, looking back, at the age of seven my
mind was a battle ground of three competing forces: how bad I was, how good I
was, and how responsible I must be for making the world a better place. It
would remain so for many years as I gradually matured and sorted out the
competing forces at play in my mind. I cannot say I have reconciled the
differences, but I can say that by the time I became an adult, I understood
them better than ever. Today, I give Edith Oliver credit for helping me to
begin to see that I was a person in my own right and could make my own way in a
world that was as beautiful and wonderful as she knew it to be.
By the time I reached Third Grade,
in September of 1951, I had caught up with and surpassed most of the other
children in my grade. In Third Grade, I found my stride and made all A’s that year,
for the first time. What stands out in my mind the most about this year was my
class’s visit to St. Stephen’s Catholic School, on Garden Street, a few blocks
from Hallmark. For some unknown reason, my teacher, Mrs. Juanita Marich,
decided my class needed to visit this school and we did. I was appalled at what
I found there. The rooms were small and crowded. There was only one class per
grade with two classes crowded into the same room. The “playground” was tiny
and, and I saw no lunchroom or auditorium. The children looked lifeless and
glum. I returned to my school with a great new appreciation for the place that
I already loved. Forever more I had no doubt that I was fortunate beyond
measure to have my great school. Whether this was Mrs. March’s intention, I
will never know.
In many ways, my Fourth Grade year
was my best at Hallmark. Mrs. Lucile Gonzalez (the one who died at 103) was my
teacher and I was in my heyday as the “teacher’s pet.” Mrs. Gonzalez loved me,
and I loved her. We had a great year. Two memories stand out to me know about
this year, history and pageantry. At that time, the Fourth Grade curriculum
included the introduction to history with a study of Florida. Mrs. Gonzalez had
each of us make a scrapbook of Florida history. I went all out to make the very
best one possible. I wrote off to numerous Chambers of Commerce across the
state and got back a host of brochures, pictures, and other pieces of
information. I made a great scrapbook of Florida history (it was so good, Mrs.
Gonzalez used it as a model in her next year’s class). Most importantly, I
formed a concept of history as a wonderful academic field of study. This began
a lifelong love of the discipline of history. Of course, as a child, I had
heard stories from my parents, grandparents, and others about their lives of
years ago. It was the Fourth Grade that was the real beginning of my study of
history which grew from year to year from them on, until eighteen years later I
was awarded a doctor’s degree in History by the Florida State University. In a
way, Mrs. Gonzalez was still with me. Unfortunately, I did not see her after my
time at Hallmark, but I hope, somehow, she knew the profound difference she
made in my life.
As for pageantry, Hallmark put on
its annual (1950 to 1961) “operetta” on Friday, March 13, 1953, at 7:30 p.m. It
was directed by Miss Yvonne Dionne, the music teacher. Miss Dionne, age
twenty-two, was drop-dead gorgeous and we children were all madly in love with
her. We could hardly wait until our weekly music session with her in the
auditorium (she traveled to various schools). She was a natural beauty with
soft shoulder-length curly brown hair, large dark eyes, and the sweetest
disposition imaginable. She was beautiful inside and out. She loved us and we all
adored her. (The following year, 1954, we were all heart-broken when she
announced she would not be back the next year as she was about to get married
and move away.) The program this year was a trip around the world in music and
dance. The Fourth Grade classes were assigned Spain and so sang and danced to
“Spanish” themes. However, I was not on stage with them as I was a “knight.”
Each of the eighteen classrooms of Hallmark elected a “knight” and “maid” to
represent the class in the royal court as the highlight of the operetta. My
class elected me knight, and, as maid, Alexandra Deomes, a Greek beauty. The
king and queen were elected by the Sixth Grade classes (this year, Carl Shiver
and Loretta Keller). On the evening of the performance, the teachers lined up
the “court” of knights and maids in the hallway for the procession to the stage
but Alexandra was not there. Finally, she rushed in at the last minute in a
lovely yellow dress with ribbons. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I
had ever seen and I was so proud to hold out my arm to process up onto the
stage to greet the king and queen. Whatever immaturity, insecurities, and
self-doubts I usually held vanished for the couple of hours in which Miss
Dionne put on what was probably her best work at Hallmark. It was spectacular.
I was on the top of the world. (The Pensacola
News Journal described the performance in its Mar. 8, 1953 edition.)
Yvonne Dionne
married Richard W. White in 1954. The couple had three sons. This picture is
from the Pensacola News-Journal of
June 12, 1977, twenty-three years after her time at Hallmark. At the age of 46,
“Miss Dionne” was still a radiant beauty. She died on September 28, 1986, at
the age of 55, and was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery, Pensacola.
In the Fifth Grade, I was in the
class of Mrs. Velma Echols, another outstanding teacher. The history subject of
this year was introduction to American history. What stands out in my mind now
is that she taught us different views of history. She had us do a debate on
whether Alaska and Hawaii should become states of the union. As I recall, the
pro side won. Here is where I learned one could see the same subject with
differences of opinion, that views were not necessarily right or wrong. Mrs.
Echols was also a lover of botany. One day she arranged to get a school bus and
took us all over Pensacola to study nature. Pensacola has always been a
gardener’s paradise. I remember visiting a garden nursery and having the owners
talk with us about the differences in plants.
It was also in this year that I was
proud to be chosen for the “school boy patrol.” A few boys of the upper grades
were selected for this. In the morning before school and in the afternoon after
school, we patrol boys manned the main intersections and stopped traffic with
our “flags” to let students across. We also had to put out and take in from the
middle of Barrancas Avenue a heavy metal “policeman,” about life-sized. He
announced the school zone. Thankfully, it had a round base that allowed the
“policeman” to be rolled on and off the street.
As a reward for this year-long service, the city policeman overseeing the program took us on a school bus tour of the state of Florida, in June of 1954. We had a wonderful time rattling around the state in that bumpy old unairconditioned bus. It was my first exploration of the state I had come to know and love so well in my Fourth Grade project. We went through Tallahassee then stopped at Silver Springs. We went down old Highway 441 through the orange groves. We were disappointed the oranges were small and green. We spent a night on the gym floor of the Howard Junior High School in Orlando, near Lake Eola. From there we went down the east coast and spent a night in an old air force base in Ft. Lauderdale. In Miami Beach, we stayed in the Blackstone Hotel, an old 1920s structure (I think it has been demolished). It was the first time I had ever stayed in a hotel. We toured the spectacularly beautiful Hialeah racetrack, closed to the public for the summer. South Florida seemed another world to me, strange and exotic. I remember the sun being extremely bright. From there we went up the west coast and stopped to see the sponge divers at Tarpon Springs. On return to Pensacola, we were all dead tired but exhilarated by our journey around the state. Looking back, I am grateful to have had this trip because in 1954, Florida still had much of its natural beauty that has since been overwhelmed and destroyed by “development” that a lot of native Floridians, as myself, see as destruction.
As a reward for this year-long service, the city policeman overseeing the program took us on a school bus tour of the state of Florida, in June of 1954. We had a wonderful time rattling around the state in that bumpy old unairconditioned bus. It was my first exploration of the state I had come to know and love so well in my Fourth Grade project. We went through Tallahassee then stopped at Silver Springs. We went down old Highway 441 through the orange groves. We were disappointed the oranges were small and green. We spent a night on the gym floor of the Howard Junior High School in Orlando, near Lake Eola. From there we went down the east coast and spent a night in an old air force base in Ft. Lauderdale. In Miami Beach, we stayed in the Blackstone Hotel, an old 1920s structure (I think it has been demolished). It was the first time I had ever stayed in a hotel. We toured the spectacularly beautiful Hialeah racetrack, closed to the public for the summer. South Florida seemed another world to me, strange and exotic. I remember the sun being extremely bright. From there we went up the west coast and stopped to see the sponge divers at Tarpon Springs. On return to Pensacola, we were all dead tired but exhilarated by our journey around the state. Looking back, I am grateful to have had this trip because in 1954, Florida still had much of its natural beauty that has since been overwhelmed and destroyed by “development” that a lot of native Floridians, as myself, see as destruction.
In the Sixth Grade, I was fortunate
enough to get in the class of Mrs. Marie MacArthur. For whatever reasons, she
was fond of me and I of her. The curriculum of this year featured European
history. This is where I began to learn about the backgrounds and cultures of
countries beyond my own. This began my fascination with Europe (on the Ph.D.
level, I specialized in the French Revolution and Napoleon; and this required
months of research in France). Mrs. MacArthur was a wonderful teacher.
Nevertheless, I remember a few uncomfortable things about this year. In the
first place, her room was the upstairs one with one row of windows facing
south. There was no cross-ventilation or air-conditioning. For much of the year
the room was stifling, usually with a slight breeze of salty, humid air off Pensacola
Bay to the south by a few blocks. Our papers and books often stuck to our
sweaty arms and hands. Fortunately for us students, Mrs. MacArthur allowed us
to relax after lunch as she read aloud a book, a chapter a day. Our favorite of
the year was The Black Stallion.
The following two pages show my Sixth Grade report card.
Also, this year I had one of the
most embarrassing moments of my life, and it was entirely my fault. Mrs.
MacArthur, who was always partial to me, asked me to be in charge of putting on
a play about Columbus for the Sixth Grade classes. I agreed. We rounded up a
cast of a dozen or so. She put me in charge of the whole thing and left it all
to me. I had never been in this kind of situation and immature as I was, really
did not know how to pull it off. I gave out the scripts, and the cast and I put
together costumes and had a few “rehearsals.” However, I did not realize that
the lines had to be thoroughly memorized and practiced before the performance.
Somehow, I thought it would just proceed naturally. On the day of the play, the
Sixth Grade classes came in to the auditorium and the curtain opened. The
actors started to recite their parts. After a few lines, I and everyone else
forgot what we were supposed to say. We had not memorized our lines as we
should have. So, we just stopped and stood looking at each other for what
seemed like an eternity. There was no one to “cue” us the lines. After the
“deer in the headlights” moment, Mrs. MacArthur realized what was happening and
she quietly got up and ushered the classes out of the auditorium. We failed
“actors” shamefully ambled off the stage and back to our rooms. Mrs. MacArthur must
have been profoundly disappointed in me but she did not say a word about it,
and I certainly did not mention it to her. I was mortified with embarrassment
as I am sure she could see. However, I learned a very important lesson that has
stuck with me for my whole life: When a person puts trust in you to carry out a
responsibility, you must do it to the best of your abilities, or else bring
dishonor on yourself and disappointment on the one who offered the trust. While
I cannot say I have perfected this, I have tried to live my life under this
principle: If you agree to take a
responsibility, carry it out as well as you can, for your own sake and the
sakes of others. This was the most important lesson I learned in the Sixth
Grade, perhaps in all of my grades. For this, I am eternally grateful to Marie
MacArthur. Perhaps her faith in me was not misplaced after all.
Finally, June of 1955 arrived and
the end of my days at Hallmark School approached. I had mixed emotions,
thrilled at the end of the school year and the promise of a summer of lazy fun
ahead, which in Pensacola meant the beach, but also deep sadness at leaving my
“home” of the past six years. In so many ways, I was and was not the same
little boy who had arrived so eagerly nearly six years earlier leaving his
mother behind. I remember that hot and sunny June day of 1955 very well. At the
closing bell, all the students ran out of the school immediately, all except
me. I lingered. Part of me did not want to go. Finally, I ambled out alone, my
desk things in hand. I went down the south stairs, and out the south door. I
stopped, stood for awhile as happy memories flooded over me. I had spent half
of my life in this beautiful building among these wonderful people. It was so
hard to let go. In the bright, hot sunshine, I looked around one last time. I
ran my hands over the yellow bricks by the door and said my sad goodbyes to the
place I had loved so well. I turned and slowly walked the mile or so back to my
house. At the age of twelve, I knew my life had reached one ending and was
about to start a new beginning at Blount Junior High School. However, I had the
confidence that my years at Hallmark had grounded me for life. I was ready for
whatever was to happen next. My gratitude to Hallmark School today knows no
bounds. The picture here is of me at age twelve at the end of the Sixth Grade.
Another memorable part of Hallmark
School was its cafeteria. It was first-rate. Mrs. Ruby Jennings managed it for
thirty-eight years, until her retirement in June of 1983. She was as lovingly
devoted to the school as were so many of the teachers. Mrs. Jennings and her
crew worked wonders providing lunches for the children. In the 1940s and 50s
when I was there, preparing lunch for 600 children was a lot of hard work (only
a few children brought their lunches). There was no microwave oven, no frozen
meals. The cooks arrived before the children and left at the end of the day, no
doubt exhausted. Most dishes had to be made from scratch or out of a can; and
most prepared in huge pots and pans over hot stoves (none of the school was
airconditioned). Mrs. Jennings served many delicious meals, but her most
popular was “sloppy joe.” There was also an assortment of other entrees, as
spaghetti, hot dogs, meat loaf and mashed potatoes. We also got an assortment
of fruits and vegetables. The meal was always accompanied by sliced whole wheat
bread. Our least favorite item was half an orange which we often got in the
winter. It is hard to eat an orange halved across the middle. My very favorite
item was Mrs. Jennings’ mouth-watering vanilla sheet cake covered with pink
frosting. It was made from scratch. I think now what made her meals so great
was not the food alone but the loving hands that prepared and served that food.
When I was in the Sixth Grade, I
was given the task of preparing a sheet-size menu of the day to be put up on
the bulletin board at the entrance to the cafeteria to inform the children of
what would be on the lunch tray that day. In the morning, I would go talk with
Mrs. Jennings to get the menu. She was also patient and kind even though she
had probably rather not be bothered in view of all the work she had to do. I
wrote out the menu in big letters and drew little cartoons around it featuring
the dishes.
The photo is of me, Ronny
Caldwell, at age 12.
When I started school in 1949,
lunch cost ten cents, when I left in 1955, fifteen cents. My parents managed to
pay, but some parents on the west side of Pensacola could not pay. There were
some students on “free lunch” but the rest of us did not know who they were.
When we entered the cafeteria in single file, Mrs. Margaret Rogers, the faithful,
long-serving school secretary, sat at a little table and took our money. She
knew who the “free lunch” children were and passed them through silently.
One matter that bothered me about
lunch was that Miss Hartman had an annoying habit of circulating around the
lunch room scolding us for not eating well or drinking our milk. The milk came
in little glass bottles with the cream on the top. I was lactose intolerant, so
I pretended to be drinking when she reached me barking “drink your milk” and
then put it down as soon as she left. If I drank much milk, I doubled over with
stomach pains.
Hallmark was well-known for its
large and active PTA. Every Halloween, the PTA put on an elaborate carnival on
one evening as a fund raiser for the school. Hundreds of people visited and
participated. In addition, the school always entered a float in the annual
Fiesta of Five Flags parade. Instead of a Madi Gras, as Mobile and New Orleans
had, the authorities of Pensacola decided to have an annual Fiesta as an homage
to the town’s Spanish heritage. In the days of festivities, there was always a
big parade on Palafox Street, usually from Main St. to Wright St. Hallmark
School routinely won First Place in the school float contest in the 1950s. This
was because George Markham, a local commercial artist, designed the floats and,
with the help of PTA men, constructed them. They were always works of art.
Getting to and from school was also
an adventure for me. It was about a mile from my house on Cypress Street to
Hallmark School. In the First Grade, I rode the bus to and from school, but
after that I had to walk or ride my bicycle, or in bad weather, get a ride from
my Dad. My main route was Barrancas Avenue. When I was a small child during and
just after the Second World War, this was the only direct route between
downtown and the Pensacola Naval Air Station, several miles to the southwest of
the city. At that time, traffic was always bumper-to-bumper on the
thoroughfare. It was a broad avenue that ran diagonally from Garden Street to
near the mouth of Bayou Chico where it originally crossed on a narrow, two-lane
rickety old wooden bridge that had a single draw. Occasionally drunk sailors
went into the bayou. In 1949, a new four-lane street was built connecting the
City and NAS as Garden Street was extended by a viaduct over the Frisco
railroad tracks into Warrington where the route was called Navy Boulevard. At
the same time, a new bridge was built over Bayou Chico, the old one demolished,
and Barrancas traffic was diverted at “O” Street, later called Pace Boulevard,
to go over the new bridge into Warrington and NAS beyond. In my school years,
Barrancas remained a busy street but not as congested as it had been in the
Second World War period.
There were several interesting
features on my way to and from school. In the morning I first encountered the
creosote plant with its unpleasant odors. Shortly after that, the main line of
the Frisco railroad crossed Barrancas to run along Main Street toward the
harbor. We hoped that trains would not be blocking our path. Then came the
Spearman Brewing Company and its beer aromas. I found the smells to be bitter
and acrid (I have a lifelong aversion to beer). Adjacent was the Crystal Ice
house at busy Government Street. Passing Leo’s Laundry and its dry cleaning odors,
I cut through to the school. On Barrancas near Hallmark stood the Gulf City
Coffee Company invariably pumping out through the whole neighborhood a heavenly
and strong smell of roasting coffee. I still love coffee.
On my walk home, which most of the
year was in sunny, hot, and humid weather, I always stopped at “the ice house”
on the south side of the intersection of Barrancas and Government. On the
corner of its loading dock was a short wooden stair. At its top, on the edge of
the dock, stood a large wooden barrel with a faucet on the bottom. All of my
friends and I stopped for long and ice-cold drinks of water from the faucet. We
drank all we could hold. At the time I took the plentiful and free freezing
cold water for granted but looking back, I can see it was an unspoken gift of
the ice company to us school children of the neighborhood. The Spearman family
of Pensacola owned the ice house just as they did the brewery next door. I know
now that the ice house workers saw to it that blocks of ice were put in the
barrel so that plenty of cold water would be available when the school children
walked by soon after 3:00 p.m. The fact that the water was always there and
always ice-cold was no accident. This was a kind gesture that meant a great
deal to lots of sweaty and thirsty youngsters like me. So, I say a belated
“thank you” to the Spearmans and the men who worked at the ice company. I think
that was the best, and coldest, water I have ever drunk. (The ice house is still
there, now named “Reddy Ice.” The brewery was demolished in the 1980s.)
My life
at Hallmark ran from age 6, 1949, to age 12, 1955; however, my family’s
connection to the school lasted from 1945 to 1961. My oldest brother attended
Hallmark from 1945 to 1951, my next oldest brother from 1947 to 1953, and my
sister from 1955 to 1961. Thus, my family’s time at the school lasted from 1945
to 1961.
__________________________________________
By 1961,
the demographic complexion of Pensacola’s west side began to change. It had
been the mostly white lower middle class and working-class area of the city. The
east side was the more affluent part of Pensacola. This reached its fullest
measure in the late 1950s when Hallmark School housed well over 600 students.
At my church, on N Street, the average Sunday School attendance at that time was
400. By 1960, this began to change; and the change accelerated dramatically in
the early 1960s. Around 1960, low-cost new housing developments began mushrooming
well beyond the old residential limits to the west and north of the city. In
1959, Tristan Village advertised a new house and lot for $10,000. These were
three bedroom and one and a half bath houses. They were small, at around 1,000
square feet, but they were new and inviting. Buyers stampeded to claim the new
houses; and immediately developers began constructing other new neighborhoods
near Tristan Village, as Montclair. Thus, by the early 1960s, many white
residents who lived in Pensacola between downtown and Bayou Chico moved out to
the new, inexpensive suburbs. By then, my church’s Sunday School attendance had
declined by a third. Hallmark’s enrollment began to fall. The older white residential
neighborhoods, built mostly in the 1920s and 30s, became racially mixed.
Integration
arrived in Escambia County’s public schools in the early 1960s. The old Jim
Crow system of the south had kept the schools strictly segregated by race. African
American children were provided substandard schools and substandard educations.
All-white Hallmark began to integrate racially in or about 1964. We do not know
the exact relationship between integration and the school enrollment. What we
do know is that the school increased minority enrollment and decreased overall
enrollment. By 1987, the student body stood at 375, by 2008 at 250, and at
closure in 2011, 232 students, about a third of what it had been in the heyday
of the 1950s. At the end, Hallmark was 91% minority (78% African American) in
its student body. The school had seen a remarkably stable and long term
administrative and teaching staff from its beginnings until Miss Hartman’s
retirement in 1964. There was little turnover. Afterwards this changed and
turnover became more rapid with time. From 1964 to the end, in 2011, there were
seven principals: Gavin E. Thorsen
(1964-1967); James E. Reese (1967-1985); Marjorie W. Hankins Anderson
(1985-1991); Joan M. Fox (1991-2001); Connie Farish (2001-2004), left to become
principal of Scenic Heights Elementary School; Linda Green (2004-2005), left to
become assistant principal of Myrtle Grove Elementary School; and Sheree Cagle
Mauldin (2005-2011). Cagle-Mauldin was chosen as the principal of the successor
school.
To its
credit, the school board did about all it could to keep the school functioning
well. It increased programs and services, greatly enlarged the staff, and
poured money into plant repair, improvement, and expansion. In 1969,
kindergarten was added for the first time and the school lost the fourth,
fifth, and sixth grades. Hallmark became a K-3 school. The board began hiring
teachers’ aides and other support staff. By 1978, there were more staff
positions than classroom teachers. This included nine “teachers’ aides.” This
trend was to continue.
Several
times the school board adjusted the configuration of the school. In 1985, a
pre-kindergarten was added making the school pre-K-3. The support staff
positions continued to grow. As the student body continued to shrink along with
the test scores, the school board decided to return grades four and five. They
were resumed in 1996 making Hallmark a pre-K-5 school from then on.
Nevertheless, enrollment continued to decline. The school board refused to give
up on the school, at least not yet. It continued to add positions. When Miss
Hartman retired in 1964, the school had a total staff of about 27, 19 classroom
teachers, one librarian, one secretary, one principal, one custodian, and
several lunch room workers. In 1978, there were 38 positions with only 10 as
classroom teachers. By 1999, even as enrollment declined, there were 50
full-time staff at Hallmark. This included 17 classroom teachers. There were 10
others as reading, music, PE, counselor, LD, SLI, librarian, curriculum
coordinator, and EMH. In addition, there were 17 “educational support”
positions and the principal, cafeteria manager, secretary, data processor, and
“child care site director.” 1999-2000 was the high point of the school board’s
efforts to keep the school going. This was also the time they decided to build
a new state-of-the-art media center, behind the school, that would feature the
latest technology. Apparently, the efforts did not work well. Academic
achievement remained relatively low. However, even at the end, in 2009, the
school still held 39 full-time positions, of those just 13 were classroom
teachers. In the end there was only one pre-K class, one K, and one Fifth Grade
class. The others had 2, 3 or 4 classes.
By 2009,
it was clear Hallmark was not sustainable as a public school. Enrollment was
down to about 250 students. All the money, improvements, and staff galore did
not turn the school around. The school board decided to close both Hallmark and
Allie Yniestra and to combine the student bodies into a new school to be built
on land between the two schools. The decision to close was handed down in 2009.
The school board set the opening of the new school to be the fall of 2011.
Hallmark
was superseded by a new school with the grandiose name of Global Learning
Academy, at 100 north P Street. It opened in 2011 with 763 students in
pre-kindergarten to Grade Five. The new school was reminiscent of Hallmark as
it was constructed of yellow brick and had hints of the old architecture.
The old
school closed its doors in 2011. Fortunately for me, I visited the building one
day shortly before that. It was in August of 2008, just before classes were to start. I
felt a strange urgency to visit the old place. I must have had a premonition of
what was to come. The few teachers on hand greeted me warmly and gave me free
run of the place. I spent a long time slowly wandering about the building. I
had not been inside in over fifty years. It was very much the same as I had
remembered. Memories flooded over me as I strolled the halls and went from one
old classroom of mine to another. I explored again the auditorium. The stage
and the curtain were exactly the same as they had always been. My Sixth Grade
embarrassment there was as fresh in mind as ever. I wanted so much to cut out
the golden “H” in the stage curtain as a souvenir. I wish I had it now.
Finally, as the ghosts of so many beloved teachers and classmates overwhelmed
me, I walked out and took lots of pictures before I left the place, as
reluctantly as I had all those many years ago, in 1955.
The golden "H" topped the dark blue stage curtain and presided over every assembly for sixty years.
I can
understand why Hallmark had outlived its educational usefulness. Time had
passed it by. What was state of the art in 1928 was hopelessly inadequate in
the new age of technology of the twenty-first century. What I do not understand
is why the building, an architectural treasure of the city’s past, could not
have been preserved and repurposed as so many old schools have been.
I do not
know as a fact, but I suspect what happened to the Hallmark School building had
less to do with the building and more to do with the land. The two city blocks
contained five acres of prime real estate, perhaps the last such large parcel
available in close proximity to the city center (app. I mile). The original
purchasers of the old school, 349 LLC, paid $1m for it all as they talked about
various uses they could make of the building. The school board made the sales
agreement with Matthew Pair, of 3 West Garden Street, on March 19, 2013. The
deed was signed over on April 10, 2013. In time, however, the buyers sold it
for app. $1.6m to a house construction company which intended to demolish the
old building to make way for seventy-six townhouses around the edges of the
five acres. Actually, parts of the west side of the City of Pensacola have been
going through “gentrification” for years now. The old school was demolished in
2017. Pictures of this are available in the newspaper. It is too painful to
reproduce them here.
I do not
want to leave anyone with the impression that Hallmark School was a perfect
place when I was there. It was not. I wish it had had some men teachers. Little
boys need male role models. I wish too it had had more science in the
curriculum. I wish, as well, the student body had been more diverse so that I
could have gotten a better understanding of people beyond my narrow
socio-cultural-economic range. This would have helped my adjustment to the broader
world as I grew and matured into adulthood. Looking back, Jim Crow was harmful
to us white children too. None of this, however, is meant to be a criticism of
the school itself.
In the
end, how can I summarize my life at Hallmark School? I would use three words:
education, socialization, and self-awareness. In the first, I gained a firm and
broad knowledge, understanding and appreciation of reading, history, writing,
mathematics, art, and music. On socialization, I learned how to get along with a
wide range of personalities. I learned that people vary greatly but beneath it
all were the same. On self-awareness, I began developing an understanding of
who I was as an individual person, what was important to me, what my strong and
weak points were, and most of all what moral and ethical principles should
guide my life. I believe these three things formed a solid foundation on which
I built my life. Looking back at age seventy-five, I cannot imagine being the
person I am today without having had my six years at Hallmark School. For
children like me, education offered an avenue to a better life. Hallmark School
was my way up and I happily took it. I could never repay the debt I owe to the
school board, administrators, teachers, and students who filled my young life
with wonder and the opening to a better world. Hallmark School may be
physically gone, but it will live on in the hearts and minds of countless
people like me whose lives were forever changed for the better by that
remarkable place.
Finally, I
have a request of the Escambia County School Board. The grandiose name of the
new school, “Global Learning Academy,” is absurd. This is a ridiculous name for
a school on the west side of Pensacola. This school should be named The
Yniestra-Hartman Elementary School. For more than five decades, these two remarkable
women devoted themselves completely to the school children of the west side of
Pensacola even as they received so little in return. This is their school. This
is their legacy. We, the fortunate ones who benefited so much from their lives,
owe at least this recognition to them. Therefore, I move we rename the new
school The Yniestra-Hartman Elementary School. Any seconds?
