Was "Mr. Kooker" your teacher?

He taught public school for 46 years - mostly in Bluffton, except for a brief span in Hawaii - so chances are good that if you attended Bluffton you probably came in contact he him.

Several years ago the Icon interviewed “Mr. Kooker” about his early years teaching in Bluffton elementary. This is a brief section of the interview. The entire interview will be published in a book about Bluffton in the 1950s to be released later.

I got my teaching job in Bluffton by interviewing with Aaron Burr Murray, the superintendent. We became very good friends. Later on, A.B. and I joined the pheasant club outside Bluffton and would often go hunting together.

He interviewed me for a teaching opening in Bluffton. The starting salary before I started was $1,800. But, that year the State of Ohio passed a law providing for a minimum salary for teachers in Ohio.

Because of that law, the school would have had to pay be twenty-four hundred dollars. Since I had an extra year of college they paid me twenty-five hundred. There were no medical benefits and I can’ think of any other benefits we had. The salary I received was comparable to other schools around Bluffton.

I started teaching in Bluffton schools in 1951-52. I taught fourth grade and in my first class there were 41 children. The room I had in the old grade school had only windows in the back.

With 41 children, the room was crammed full. The rest rooms were in the basement. However, my fourth grade students were very good students.

It was a lot of fun teaching in the 1950s. My kids were very well behaved and I actually missed them on weekends. A lot of the kids came from farms. They were taught to work.

When I mean my classroom was crammed, I didn’t even have room for a table. It was wall-to-wall kids. There was a brick wall on one side. There were huge black boards with chalk. Although the desks had a hole for inkwells, we didn’t use the inkwells. We had ballpoint pens.

Student desks had shelves underneath. When the kids filled them up and pulled something out, everything fell out.

There were three floors in the elementary building. My classroom was on the second floor. The top floor was condemned, so that no one was allowed up there. I think at one time that floor was the gym floor for the high school. It was a big, open empty space as I remember it.

We had no playground supervisor, but I went out to play football, baseball and basketball with the children since recess was my favorite subject when I was in school. I can’t remember, but I think we took students to the high school cafeteria for lunch. As I remember, Miss Hilty was the one who took them to the high school all the time. 

The other teachers in the elementary during my first year were Meredith Stepleton, first grade; I can’t recall who taught second grade; Minerva Hilty, third grade; Bob Ewing and I taught fourth grade; Adella Oyer, fifth grade; and Theola Steiner, sixth grade.

Walter Sommers was the custodian. He was there for the entire decade of the 1950s. He was the only other staff member at the elementary. In fact, I had his granddaughter, Sandy Gleason, as a student in the fourth grade.

In my second year of teaching I had 38 children and I taught both fourth and fifth grade in the same room. My fifth graders were the same children I had as fourth graders. The fifth graders would help fourth graders, especially with math if they were having trouble.

I think this was very good because the fifth graders helped them. Sometimes the fifth graders even graded fourth grade tests for me. Some of them went on to be teachers like Vera Basinger and Sandy Diller. Teaching two grades really kept me busy. You had to make lesson plans for two grades and there were a lot of papers to grade.

The complete text of this interview will be published in an upcoming book with similiar stories and interviews with people about Bluffton in the 1950s.