Herd retires after 31 years of teaching in Ozark County schools

Reprinted from the June 13, 1984 edition of the Ozark County Times. 

by Sue Ann Jones

When Jean Herd retired in May [1984] after 31 years of teaching, she left behind a career that included other tasks besides imparting knowledge. 

In 1953, when she began teaching, she presided over a one-room school in Longrun where her duties ranged from janitorial to tonsorial: she swept the floors, built fires in the pot-belly stove and sometimes cut the students’ hair, when asked. There were 14 students in the class, two of them were 14 years old and four others were first cousins.

She also served as the community social chairman, organizing talent shows, pie suppers, Halloween parties and other events to raise money for blackboards, world globes and other school equipment.

She was only 17 when she began teaching in the community where she was born. Her parents, Merl and Dortha Brewer Silvey, named her Willow Jean, but to her students she was “Miss Jean.”

“I started school when I was five,” she said. “And I graduated from high school when I was 16. Then I went one year to Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar and started teaching.”

She got her early start in school thanks to her first teacher at Longrun, Kelly Sallee, and her brother, H. K. Silvey.

“My brother is two years older than I am. He brought his books home from school, and I learned to read them,” she said. “I started school the next year, and Kelly Sallee said since I already could read the first grade books, I might as well just start in the second grade. So, I did.”

After a year at Longrun, that school closed as the school districts began consolidating. She then taught at Hammond for a year and when that school was closed too, she went on to teach at Nottinghill. While there, she met her husband, Paul Herd. 

“At that time, all the schools sent their students to Gainesville for immunization shots. Paul was teaching at Pontiac, and I was at Nottinghill, and we both had brought our students to Gainesville for their shots the same day. Paul asked Marvin Looney (then a high school teacher) who I was. A little while later, an extension course was offered, and we both took it. We studied together on Sundays - but we really didn’t do much studying,” she said. 

They were married in March 1956.

Herd began teaching math and history in Gainesville high school the following fall, and Mrs. Herd taught at Pine View. 

“At Pine View I had nine students, and I thought I would die,” Mrs. Herd said with a laugh. “We read every book we could get our hands on. We walked those hills. We couldn’t even play ball - there just weren’t enough kids.”

She spent the next two years teaching at Pontiac school and then moved on to Barren Fork for four years. 

In her first years in the rural schools, there was no electricity. And there were no telephones.

“I remember one hardship this caused for us, at least we thought it was. We never knew when the photographer was coming to take the school pictures. He would just drive up. There was no way to call. And since there was no electricity for his lights, we had to sit in the brightest spot near the window while he took the pictures,” she recalled. 

She loved to play softball with her students. At lunchtime, they all gathered under a shade tree for a picnic, sometimes sharing their lunches and calling it “dinner on the grounds.”

She played with them in the winter, too.

“I really liked the snowball fights. The rule was if anyone cried, he had to go in the house,” she said. 

Sometimes she spent the night with her students’ families. “One night I stayed with the Elza Hogans. It snowed and the next morning we all went rabbit hunting.”

Parents were invited to the school on Fridays for spelling matches and ciphering contests. The students and parents competed together, led by captains who chose up sides, as in a ballgame. 

“I think one of the most rewarding things about a one-room school was when I’d ask a question in the sixth or seventh or eighth grade and maybe a little second grader would raise his hand and say, “I know that!” Students listened to the other grades’ classes, and they learned a lot that way.

“We had few problems because parents and the community were always interested in what went on in their schools. Everyone was very supportive.”

Occasionally, there were bad times to offset the good.

“One day at Longrun, Sue (Honeycutt) Tharp broke her arm when she fell jumping rope. She was doing hot pepper. She was just a first grader, and I carried her to the store across the road. Her parents were there, and her mother said later she didn’t know who was crying louder when they got there - Sue or me,” Mrs. Herd said. “And one time when I was at Hammond school, Roger Wright was standing where kindling was being chopped and was hit in the head and cut. There wasn’t any phone. I had to dismiss school and take him home and get his mother, and we took him to the doctor in Ava, who stitched his cut, and he was soon back in school.”

Mrs. Herd and her husband attended summer school several years at Southwest Missouri State College (now University) at Springfield. Herd earned a masters degree and later served as GHS principal for 12 years. He retired in 1979. Mrs. Herd earned her bachelors degree in 1960.

They have one daughter, Paula, who graduated in 1982 from Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, which she attended on basketball and softball scholarships. Miss Herd has been employed as the Gainesville high school girls coach for the upcoming year. 

During their daughter’s four years in college, the Herds attended all of her softball and basketball games. 

Mrs. Herd began teaching first grade at the Gainesville elementary school in 1963. For the next 20 years, until her retirement in May, she taught fourth grade.

“I love that fourth grade age,” she said. “The students, 9 or 10 years old, are independent. You don’t have to tell them to blow their noses or tie their shoes. And they’re not in love yet - at least most of them aren’t.”

She enjoyed singing to her students. 

“If I was giving out the spelling words and a word reminded me of a song, I’d sing it to them,” she said. “And I used to sing the Boll Weevil song. Pete Klineline told me once that he was with his son, Robert, one night when they heard Tex Ritter singing the Boll Weevil song on the radio. Robert said, ‘Shoot, he can’t sing it nearly as good as Miss Jean.’”

She’s received dozens of trinkets and handkerchiefs and other gifts throughout her teaching career. But it’s a compliment she remembers most. It was a comment that the late M. J. Luna, former superintendent, once made about her. 

Mrs. Herd said, “He once told someone, ‘Jean may not be the best teacher I’ve got, but she’s the best mother.’ He went on to tell how he used to come to the school and bring a film for the students to see. ‘As often as not,’ he said, ‘by the end of the film, Jean’d have one little one on her lap and a couple more standing next to her.’”

She is retiring, she said, because she wants to spend more time with her family, including her parents at Longrun. And she wants more time to help her husband tend their 500-acre cattle farm near the Romance community.

“I know when fall comes, I’m going to miss teaching,” she said. “I’ll try to remember how hot it is that time of year, and I know I’ll not miss being in the schoolroom on those days so much. But I’ll miss those fourth graders and just being in a schoolroom. After all, I’ve spent every winter in school either as a student or teacher for the past 43 years.”

Teachers and students will miss her, too. She was presented a plaque in recognition of her 31 years of service to Ozark county schools at a recent Community Teachers Association banquet held in her honor.

During the evening, a friend, Gay Strong, read a poem expressive of everyone’s feelings at Mrs. Herd’s retirement.

Part of the poem says:

For 30 years and maybe more,

she greeted students at the door.

She taught them math and ABCs, 

and wiped their tears

 and kissed skinned knees.

To her their problems they would tell. 

She took the time to know them well.

Next year we’ll miss her smiling face,

and school will be a quieter place.

And in our eyes, tears will be seen.

Because we’ll miss our Willow Jean.