I taught from 1932 to 1936 at Daisy Dell School, District #69, which was located two miles north and one mile west of Cadams, Nebraska, in Nuckolls County.
There were 22 of us in my Hardy High School graduating class in 1932. Since I had taken Normal Training in high school, I was able to start teaching that fall. At 17 years old, I was barely older than some of my students. I taught at Daisy Dell for three years on my normal training certificate. Then I went to Nebraska State Teachers at Kearney College during the summer of 1935 to renew my certificate and I taught one more year at Daisy Dell.
Times were tough in the early 30s. My teaching salary was less than $50 a month.
It helped that I could stay with Carl and Helen Hansen, my brother and sister-in-law. They lived a half mile south of the school, so I could walk to school. I can remember going to Hardy to buy salmon for 9 cents a can.
I needed a waste paper basket for the school and asked a school board member if we could buy one. He said, “No.” The kids at Daisy Dell liked to sing, so I asked him the school could buy an old organ at Zona Berg’s in Superior for $25. Again, he said, “No.” But my dad, Knud Hansen, went and bought the organ for us, so we got it anyway. Two of my students, Esther and Mildred Schlamann, learned to play the organ. I think they learned well enough to play in church.
The above information is from a brief autobiography that our mother wrote on her 80th birthday, December 4, 1994.
Our parents, Mae and Eldon Grove were secretly married on December 24, 1935, in Philipsburg Kansas. They returned to live with their respective parents until the end of the school year. Mom would have lost her job had the school board discovered that she was a married woman!!
We chose to honor our mother, Mae Hansen Grove, with the One Room, One Teacher initiative because she certainly instilled in us the value of an education.
Submitted by Lee Grove
There were 22 of us in my Hardy High School graduating class in 1932. Since I had taken Normal Training in high school, I was able to start teaching that fall. At 17 years old, I was barely older than some of my students. I taught at Daisy Dell for three years on my normal training certificate. Then I went to Nebraska State Teachers at Kearney College during the summer of 1935 to renew my certificate and I taught one more year at Daisy Dell.
Times were tough in the early 30s. My teaching salary was less than $50 a month.
It helped that I could stay with Carl and Helen Hansen, my brother and sister-in-law. They lived a half mile south of the school, so I could walk to school. I can remember going to Hardy to buy salmon for 9 cents a can.
I needed a waste paper basket for the school and asked a school board member if we could buy one. He said, “No.” The kids at Daisy Dell liked to sing, so I asked him the school could buy an old organ at Zona Berg’s in Superior for $25. Again, he said, “No.” But my dad, Knud Hansen, went and bought the organ for us, so we got it anyway. Two of my students, Esther and Mildred Schlamann, learned to play the organ. I think they learned well enough to play in church.
The above information is from a brief autobiography that our mother wrote on her 80th birthday, December 4, 1994.
Our parents, Mae and Eldon Grove were secretly married on December 24, 1935, in Philipsburg Kansas. They returned to live with their respective parents until the end of the school year. Mom would have lost her job had the school board discovered that she was a married woman!!
We chose to honor our mother, Mae Hansen Grove, with the One Room, One Teacher initiative because she certainly instilled in us the value of an education.
Submitted by Lee Grove