Shaping the Future

"Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the "naturals," the ones who somehow know how to teach.”

-- Peter F. Drucker

I've had many teachers in my life, primary, middle and high school teachers, instructors, lecturers and college professors, but perhaps the two teachers who have had the greatest impact on my life never taught me in a classroom. They were my grandparents, Harlan and Ila Geyer.

Harlan was born on July 22, 1920 in Lime Creek Township, Washington, Iowa, and was raised just north of Wellman. He was the oldest of twelve children born to Francis Grant and Grace (McGimpsey) Geyer. In 1920, his father was a tenant farmer, working rented land to support his quickly growing family. Life was stressful; they had problems making ends meet for a family that grew with the birth of a child every two years. As Harlan would later put it, "We didn't have much."

But Harlan was a good student and in 1936, he decided to enter the Normal Training Program at Wellman High School. The Normal Training Program was passed into law by the Iowa State Legislature in 1911 and existed as part of the Wellman, Iowa education system between 1927 and 1945. The law included the following section:

"In order to develop an interest in rural life, at least one semester in Agriculture, Domestic Science and Manual Training is given a special place in the course. Two semesters in Pedagogy and one semester in Methods, together with emphasis on Observation and Practice Teaching is the specific professional feature of the Normal Training High School Course."

Deliberately or not, Harlan was following in the footsteps of his uncle Harold Geyer, a Class of 1927 graduate, who was one of Wellman's first Normal Training graduates.

Harlan Geyer, Sr. in 1938 (22 July 1920 - 24 March 2006)

It was strenuous, demanding work, with students sometimes coming to school before classes to study and staying late, often until suppertime, to complete the extra assignments the program required. The curriculum included specialized courses in Education Psychology, School Management, and Methods. Methods, a practical course designed to teach effective lesson development and instill good teaching principles, was especially detested, as can be seen in this parody, written and performed during a Normal Training Club meeting by Wellman Class of 1930 Normal Training graduates J. Paul Yoder and Walter Marner, with assistance from Stanley Eash and Clifford Monroe:

(Tune - "I've Been Working on the Railroad")

Verse 1:
Oh, I was born in Wellman town,
A-workin' on my Methods.
All day long I write the outline down
A-workin' on my Methods.

Chorus:
I've been workin' on my Methods
All the live long day.
I've been workin' on my Methods
To pass the time away.
Don't you hear the school bell ringin'?
Hurry to Room Five!
Get your books and start to workin'
We sure have to strive.

Verse 2:
I hope to teach a country school
If I survive my Methods.
But I will never be so cruel
As to make them work on Methods

Verse 3:
And when I die and go away
Still workin' on my Methods,
I wonder will St. Peter say,
"Do you have your Methods?"

Harlan's Normal Training Certificate

In May 1938, Harlan graduated Wellman High School and along with his diploma, received a Normal Training Certificate. He got a position teaching in a one-room schoolhouse Lookout No. 6, in English River, Washington, Iowa, where he taught for a year. He kept in touch with two of his students, exchanging Christmas cards every year. Here, Harlan describes a visit he made back to Iowa with his second wife, Mary:

We looked up where my old school was. Ila’s old school was more modern and it became a home for somebody because it had running water and electricity, but mine was just way out in the middle of nowhere, so it no longer existed. Well, we went back and seen these kids, the only two of my students that I ever really got contact with were my eighth grader and my kindergartner. The eighth grader, his mother was a widow when he was going to school and when I got in contact with him, the kindergartner, him and his wife were rentin’ my eighth grader’s farm. The eighth grader had built another house on his farm, so actually my kindergartner and my eighth grader still are back in where the school was at, on my eighth grader’s farm. And I hear from them regularly every year and we went to visit them, Mary and I did. So, it’s out in the middle between West Chester, Kalona and Wellman.

Page 1 of Harlan's Teachers Annual Report for Lookout No. 6, English River Township, Washington County, Iowa, May 1939

Between September 5, 1938 and May 5, 1939, Harlan taught eleven students, five boys and six girls. As seen on page 1 of his Teachers Annual Report, he earned $50 a month, putting the approximate average cost of tuition per student per month at $5, a fact that was recorded on the report. The girls' attendance was 97% for the year, while the boys' was 89%. Illa Belle Kauffman, age seven, was able to attend less than 24 weeks of school because of heart trouble, poor health and distance to the school.

Page 2 of Harlan's Teachers Annual Report for Lookout No. 6, English River Township, Washington County, Iowa, May 1939

The school was not in very good condition. As Harlan stated before, they had no electricity or running water. On page 2 of the report, he rates the condition of the girls' outhouse and the fuel house as poor and states that the most urgent needs of the school are better out-buildings, a new blackboard and a more sanitary drinking fountain.

Harlan gave instruction in American citizenship, physiology and hygiene with special reference to stimulants and narcotics, elements of vocal music, fifty minutes of physical education a week, the Constitution of the U.S. and of Iowa, and the history of Iowa. Volunteers managed to raise $7.41 for the school at the Christmas Program, with the money left in the charge of the School Treasurer. The report asks if the American flag was displayed regularly, it was until "lately", when the rope broke.

Page 3 of Harlan's Teachers Annual Report for Lookout No. 6, English River Township, Washington County, Iowa, May 1939

Page 3 of the report gives the students' names and marks. Enrolled in his class were: Glada L. Hollcraft, Harold Horak, Merle Venzke, Robert Scott, Darlene Venzke, Rosetta Vodicka, Harald Mass, Viola Kauffman, Edna Hoover, Leota Hoover, and Allan Stransky. All advanced to the next grade level.

Soon after he started teaching, he became friends with his future wife, Ila Bear. Harlan describes their first encounter:

Probably the first time I met her was at the teacher’s meeting. She was teaching in Washington County. There was Orville Hradek and Arvid Wagamon and I, and we were sitting behind these girls and we just wanted to tease them and I guess I stuck a pin in Ila, I don’t remember that much about it. It’s just one of the things to do when you’re a kid. I was only 18.

Ila Bear (11 June 1913 - 13 March 1992)

Ila Iola Bear was born on June 11, 1913 in Johns, Appanoose, Iowa, the daughter of Samuel Lewis and Bessie Belle (Ginkens) Bear. Her father, Samuel, was a farmer and an outstanding carpenter, who died in 1939 after his horses bolted, causing him to fall from the hay wagon, which resulted in two crushed neck vertebrae. Her mother Bessie was a school teacher before marriage.

As long as her younger brother John could remember, Ila wanted to be a school teacher as well. She graduated from Seymour High School in Wayne County, Iowa on May 12, 1932. Perhaps she wasn't the most studious girl there, in her junior year high school yearbook, her initials I.I.B. are jokingly said to stand for "Interested In Boys."

On September 9, 1935, Ila entered the Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, Iowa, now the University of Northern Iowa. A brief history from their website:

The College of Education is the oldest department on campus; in fact, UNI began as a teacher preparation school in 1876. The university was renamed the Iowa State Teachers College in 1909, and the State College of Iowa in 1961. Not until that year did the college allow its students to graduate without completing the teacher preparation sequence.

Ila's Admission to Iowa State Teachers College,

November 22, 1935

Her brother, John Bear, remembers when he and their brother Claude Bear dropped Ila off for school:

Ila went to Cedar Falls Teacher, in order to be a teacher, you know. I remember Claude and I took her up there to get enrolled and she told us to drive by the women’s dorm and honk our horn and all the women come out and looked out the windows. Another thing I’ll tell you, from southern Iowa up to Cedar Falls have a different accent and they made fun of her cause she had kind of a southern accent. And she got even with them. You heard of hedge balls?

They call them Osage-oranges. They grow pretty big and they’re green and they’re rough outside and then what they have inside is kind of like a milky stuff that’s sticky. But you get them and put them in your basement and you won’t have any spiders. Spiders don’t like 'em. But that’s how she got even with some of them girls up there for teasin' her cause she had that accent. They thought you could eat 'em and everything. They’d kill you if you ate 'em. They’re poison. She took some of 'em up there to them. Some of 'em thought that they could bite 'em. She had to stop them.

Peace must have been declared at this point, as Ila's signature book from her time at ISTC is full of poems and sentiments of friendship from her fellow students. Incidentally, Osage-oranges, also known as hedge-apples, are apparently not strongly poisonous, causing only mild vomiting when eaten (link), and have not been clinically proven to deter pests (link).

Ila's Iowa State Teachers College Transcript

At ISTC, Ila took classes in composition & rhetoric, English literature, American literature, grammar, medieval and modern history, US history, civics, economics, algebra, plane geometry, agriculture, general science, physics, physiology, physiography, arithmetic, home economics, pedagogy, and psychology.

After two semesters of instruction, Ila was ready for a teaching position, completing her ISTC coursework during summer sessions. During the 1936-1937 school year, she was the teacher at Brushy No. 3 in Walnut Township, Wayne, Iowa. She spent two years, from Sept 1938 to May 1940, at Union Rural School in Lime Creek Township, Washington, Iowa, which, in 1940, was considered one of the best, most well-equipped rural schools in Washington County.

From September 1940 to May 1941, she was an elementary grades teacher at Huron School, Burlington, Des Moines, Iowa. She taught elementary school at Fort Byron, Illinois from 1941 to 1942, and from September 1942 until June 1946, she taught elementary grades in East Moline, Illinois. On October 20, 1943, she graduated from ISTC with a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education.

She corresponded regularly with her old friend Harlan and after he returned from service in the Pacific, he proposed. They married on June 11, 1945 in Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. Afterwards, she returned to East Moline, where she lived with her brother John, while the US Marine Corp sent Harlan to school in Missouri. According to both John and Harlan, she was the first school teacher in East Moline that was allowed to continue teaching after marriage. Up till that time, women were expected to retire to their homes to raise their families upon marriage.

Harlan and Ila Geyer

In 1947, they moved to California, where Harlan was stationed at Camp Pendleton. That year, Ila gave birth to my father, Harlan Geyer, Jr., known by family and friends as Jr., and she changed careers to become a stay-at-home mom. My aunt Cherie remembers:

Jr. had trouble learning when he was young. I can remember sitting on the little brown wooden chair while she tutored Jr. and Joey Tudor in reading (with the Dick and Jane books). Maybe he was 7 or 8, and I was 3 or 4. She's why I excelled in school. She's also the reason I developed my love for reading. They both loved to teach and all the time I was in school I was going to grow up and be a teacher like my parents. My mom taught me that a girl always had to have an education and a profession that she could fall back on if something ever happened to her husband. Teaching offered that.

I remember being taught to read by my grandmother even before going off to school. I'd sit on her lap, reading out of ancient, dog-eared Dick and Jane readers, I expect that they're the same ones she taught my father out of. She and my grandfather volunteered at my elementary school, Floris Elementary, throughout my years there, touching the lives of children of still another generation.

My grandmother died on March 13, 1992, after several long years of fighting cancer. She provided me with one last lesson; she was the first difficult loss of my life. Although it was a hard lesson that I didn't want to learn at the time, my grandfather taught me about acceptance and moving on, remarrying a wonderful, very loving and kind woman, Mary. After the passing of both Mary and his son, Harlan Jr., in 2001, my grandfather stepped up to fill the role of father for my siblings and I, even making the long 12 hour flight from Washington DC to Berlin, Germany in 2003, at the ripe old age of 83, to escort me down the aisle at my wedding. He passed away last year, on March 24, 2006.

Selected sources:

[1] "Normal Training Program" in Wellman, Iowa Centennial 1879-1979, Wellman Centennial Committee (Wellman, Iowa, 1979), 178-181.

[2] Interview with Harlan Geyer, Sr. (Reston, VA), by author, 26 November 2005. Mr. Geyer is now deceased.

[3] Washington County Rural Schools, IaGenWeb, Washington County, online <http://www.rootsweb.com/~iawashin/schools.htm>. Previously published in hard copy: "Rural Schools of Washington County - 1983, Lime Creek Township," Washington County Genealogical Society Newsletter 19 (June 2002): 9-10, 6; originally published 1940-1941.

[4] Interview with John Bear (Aurora, MO), by author, 5 January 2006, in Reston, VA.

[5] E-mail messages from Cherie Geyer to author, 1-2 May 2007.

[6] "Papers of Harlan and Ila (Bear) Geyer," (1932-2006); owned by their daughter, Cherie Geyer; electronic copy in possession of author.

Bear, Ginkens/Jenkins, Kirkland family photos

These photos were all in the possession of my grandfather Harlan Geyer and are now in the possession of my aunt.

Written on back: Joe Kirkland, Margaret and Samuel Bear, Will Kirkland

This photo was probably taken in the 1880's. Margaret Jane Kirkland was married to Samuel Rupley Bear on 17 Feb 1880 (they're my great-great-grandparents). The other men are her brothers Joseph Kirkland (b. 1845 in Wetzel County, WV) and William Kirkland (b. 1840 in Ohio).

Samuel R. and Margaret Bear with children, ca. 1910

The children of Samuel and Margaret Bear are: Samuel Lewis Bear (b. 1881), James Allen Bear (b. 1883), Abraham Alexander Bear (b. 1886), Ruby Caroline Bear Wells (b. 1889) and Moses Washington Bear (b. 1894).

Henry Ginkens and wife, Martha Alice Watson Ginkens, with daughters: Bessie Belle (b. 1886), Beulah Benson (b. 1887), Mary Maude (b. 1889) and Artie Alice (b. 1891)

Samuel Lewis Bear and Bessie Belle Ginkens wedding portrait

Samuel and Bessie were married 15 May 1910 and are my great grandparents. The photography studio was located in Hot Springs, South Dakota (Fall River County).

Martha Watson Ginkens with children

Bessie Ginkens Bear (b. 1886) is in the back row on the right. Her siblings are: Beulah Belle Ginkens Entsminger (b. 1887), Artie Alice Ginkens Haines (b. 1891), Lela Leota Ginkens Barnebey (b. 1893), Ardys Austin Ginkens (b. 1895) and Lloyd Leonard Ginkens (b. 1897). I'm not sure who is pictured above. Martha Watson Ginkens and Artie Alice Haines both died in 1942, so the photo was taken prior to this.

Henry Austin Ginkens (b. 1857 in IA, d. 1924 in Fall River, SD)

According to the 1920 US Census, he and Martha were divorced between 1910 & 1920, but my family don't remember hearing about this and I suppose it would have been news back then.

The tragic life of Sanford Kirkland

In doing research on the Kirkland branch of my family, I came across a cousin who seems to have had a mysterious and sad life. I thought I'd share it in the hopes that someone who knows more of the story will come across this page and be able to add to the tale.

Sanford Kirkland was my 1st cousin, 3 times removed [Me > Harlan Geyer, Jr > Ila Bear > Samuel Bear > Margaret Kirkland > Hugh & Nancy (Morrison) Kirkland < William Kirkland < Sanford M. Kirkland].

Sanford was the only child of William J. Kirkland (born 1840 in Ohio) and Rebecca Dulaney (born 1838 in Pennsylvania). From what I can piece together, their families both settled in Wetzel County, West Virginia in the 1840's, where they grew up. According to the 1910 US census, they married around 1861. Sometime before 1870 they settled in Walnut township, Wayne County, Iowa, where Sanford was born on 25 Nov 1870.

When Sanford was seven years old, tragedy struck; his father had disappeared:

A LOST MAN. -- On Wednesday, June 6, l877, WILLIAM KIRKLAND, a farmer, started from his home, five miles west of Seymour, Wayne Co., Iowa, to go to Seymour, and took a train at Kniffin Station, and has not since been heard of. His friends think he was not in his right mind when he left. He was a man six feet high, and slender, with black hair, dark sandy whiskers and hazel eyes. He had on a dark mixed cassimere suit and a black, broad-brimmed hat.

Any information of him will be thankfully received, and all necessary charges paid by the wife.

Address by mail or telegraph REBECCA KIRKLAND, in care of E.R. Clark, Seymour, Iowa.

Source: "A Lost Man," Chariton Leader 30 Jun 1877; posted by David <railrider503@aol.com> on 11 Mar 2004,
transcribed by Nancee (McMurtrey) Seifert on 8 Mar 2004, IAGenWeb Project <http://iagenweb.org/boards/lucas/documents/index.cgi?review=47749>.

I don't know whether William was ever found. In the 1880 US Census he is listed with his family, in the 1900 US Census, his wife is "widowed", then in the 1910 US Census he is listed with the family again, and finally in the 1920 US Census, he is gone and his wife has no marital status given (which is not typical). Maybe he came home, or maybe Rebecca lost hope that he would return by 1900 and considered herself a widow, then heard something which made her change her mind. We may never know for sure, although I guess that if he returned it would be news, so a closer look at the local newspapers should be the next step here.

Sanford became a high school teacher, probably at Seymour High School. He was active in the community, being mentioned often in the local newspapers in connection with meetings of the local school board, but by the time of the 1930 US Census, he had changed careers to be a secretary for the telephone company. I wonder if, before he left teaching, he might have taught my grandmother, who graduated from Seymour HS in 1932.

On September 4, 1910, shortly before his 40th birthday, Sanford married Clementine Drake, two years his junior. It was the first marriage for both. It must have been a surprise, and I assume a joy, when in the second year of their marriage she became pregnant. But tragedy struck again; she and the child died during childbirth on December 4, 1912.

Sanford lived with his mother until her death in 1921, then when Clementine's father Joseph died in 1930, Sanford lived with his mother-in-law Selena (Clinesmith) Drake. From undocumented family trees on the web, I've found that she died in 1944 and Sanford died on April 8, 1959.

A WWI Send-off

from Humeston New Era 26 Sep 1917, page 1:

HONOR NATIONAL ARMY MEN

------------

A BIG DEMONSTRATION

------

Patriotic Program Given Wednesday

at Corydon in Honor of

Soldiers.

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59 RESPOND TO THE CALL

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Important Day in History of Wayne

County--Boys Given

Good Farewell.

Answering the summons of the nation, fifty-nine Wayne county young men, the second contingent to be taken for the National Army, left Corydon for Camp Dodge, Des Moines, over the Rock Island at 2:35 o'clock Wednesday afternoon.

Corydon and Wayne county honored the National Army men with a program and a big patriotic demonstration. The exercises were held on the court house lawn. Short talks were made by W. H. Tedrow, D. L. Murrow and W. P. Allred of Corydon, Rev. S. H. Hedrick of Allerton and L. Belvel of Lineville. Mr. Tedrow presided at the exercises. Excellent music was furnished by a twenty-nine piece band, directed by Prof. Reizenstein. Ten members of the Humeston band played. Eleven musicians were present from Allerton. A basket dinner was enjoyed at noon.

The fifty-nine soldiers, civil war veterans and the Corydon school children marched in a parade.

Two men from the first contingent attended the farewell Wednesday.

The streets were filled with people and the crowd is said to have been the largest ever seen in the county seat. Hundreds of interested relatives and friends and neighbors were present to bid the boys goodbye.

The call for the second contingent came last week after the county newspapers had been published but hurried arrangements proved satisfactory and the boys were given a good demonstration. The efforts of A. T. Gallagher, president of the Corydon Commercial club, and other were highly appreciated. The farewell last week stirred the patriotism of the county as it has not been stirred for years. There were tears, misty eyes, and choked throats, filled with emotion, but for the most part it was a cheerful crowd. Most of the farewells had been said around the family firesides the night before and on the threshold of homes that morning. Many, though, clapsed the hand they loved or kissed the cheek they had known from babyhood as the fifty-nine were given the parting at the station. Several group pictures were taken.

Daniel Boone Heller, superintendent of the Seymour schools, was selected as captain of the boys until they reached Camp Dodge. Following are the men who reported last week...