One if by Broom

Bertha Luce, Winter, 1952, Purchase Street School

(This story originally appeared in Good Old Days, April 1974. I thought you might like to revisit one of my favorite teachers, Miss Bertha Luce. I have rewritten the story to fit this space better.)

As our little ones go back to school, I invite you to reminisce about the days when you yourself started a new school year with a new teacher and maybe some new friends and even a new school. My fifth grade was spent at Purchase Street School, a school I had never attended before. They stuck a bunch of us fifth graders there that year. Our teacher was Miss Bertha Luce, and what a teacher she was. Hang onto your seats as I present Bertha “Paul Revere” Luce.

“Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…”

Bertha Luce was astride a broomstick galloping around the room. Her dramatic interpretation of Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” was interspersed with clucking sounds representing Paul’s horse. She had the attention of every one of us in the classroom, some 25 or 30 of us. Her teaching method may have been ahead of her time, but we all remembered that poem long after we left Miss Luce and the fifth grade behind.

Our teachers at that time tended to be older women as the returning soldier-teachers had not entered back into the mainstream classroom yet. Most of these “old maid” teachers were very prim and proper and put up with no nonsense from their students. Miss Luce didn’t fit this mold, however. The only thing proper and sensible about her was her black, thick-heeled lace-up shoes. Most of the teachers of her age wore them and I will forever associate any similar looking shoes with these “teacher shoes.”

Miss Luce had a tall ungainly body and long slender hands which were in perpetual motion. She had flashing brown eyes and a ready smile, but could be stern when necessary. As I remember, she wore more makeup than her contemporaries, which was unusual for that time. She knew the secret of keeping her students focused and interested in learning. How you appeared in the classroom each day had a lot to do with it, a lesson I learned when I was in teacher training myself.

She was also patient when a student had a particular problem grasping a concept. With me, that concept was fractions. Never a good math student, I learned my fractions well in Miss Luce’s class because she would stop by my desk, even pull up a chair, to explain something to me until I understood it. I thank her for that. When she saw the light go off she would toss her head of dark curls, and smile at you. My day always got better when I was on the receiving end of one of her smiles.

She could be stern when she needed to, don’t get me wrong. Her only weapon of discipline was a piece of chalk and the chalkboard. We had some rough kids in the South End and a good bunch of them were in that class with me. When one of them misbehaved, Miss Luce would march up to the blackboard and write their name in a special place reserved for that purpose, namely the staying after school spot. If your name appeared on that blackboard during the day, you had to stay after school. If you disrupted the class further that day, another check mark went next to your name which meant yet another day after school. We all sighed a sigh of relief when she wrote another name and it wasn’t yours. The worst part of this practice, however, was seeing your name up there all day and getting teased about it at recess.

Music played a big part in our classroom that year. In fact, Miss Luce lived with another old maid teacher, our music teacher, Miss Sanborn. Miss Luce played the violin quite well and did in fact give concerts in the community. Even if you didn’t like music or the sound of a violin in particular, you could not help but be enthralled when Miss Luce played her violin in the classroom.

We also sang in the morning during “morning exercises,” something unheard of today. The exercises consisted of saluting the flag; reciting the Lord’s Prayer; and maybe even reciting a Psalm like the 23rd (praying and reciting verses from the Bible hadn’t been banned yet.) Then we would sing a song, maybe “God Bless America” or the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Once in a while she would allow any of us who wished to sing for everyone that morning to perform. One morning my friend, Janet Rackliff, and I decided we wanted to sing a duet, “Springtime in the Rockies.” We harmonized quite well and were very proud of ourselves when we finished. Later on, Miss Luce asked the class to vote on who had the nicest voice that morning. As it happened I won the vote that day. I was quite a shy child and was flabbergasted that the class thought I sang better than Janet, who did have a lovely voice. Miss Luce knew what the outcome of that vote would be and she very successfully boosted my self-esteem that day.

Many years have passed since I was one of Miss Luce’s fifth graders. The old Purchase Street School has long been torn down. You can’t tear down the memories, however. Now and then I wonder if my fifth grade classmates still remember her ride on that broomstick. I will always have good memories of that school and of that very special teacher, Miss Bertha Luce.

Do you have school memories to share? We would all be happy to hear them I’m sure. I hope all our kids learn a lot of new things in school this year. Happy Labor Day, everyone.

Thanks for listening.