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Ida Mae Runyard was born on a farm in Salem,
Wisconsin on December 9, 1900. Her parents were John Robert and
Alma (nee Little) Runyard. Because they wanted their children to
have a good education, they purchased the farm across the road
from Emmons School, a mile south of Antioch, Illinois.
Ida was about 9 years old at the time but
her schooling had been on an irregular basis so the teacher taught
her as much as possible the first year and then put her in the 3rd
grade the following year. She later got typhoid fever and missed
several months of school but still managed, by eighth grade, to
pass the required test to enter high school. A new high school
was being built in Antioch so for the first school months in 1915,
she attended school in the building that is currently the Antioch
Historical Society on the grounds of the Antioch Grade School.
The whole high school occupied just the top floor of the building.
In April, the students were transferred to the new Antioch High
School, where she graduated in 1919.
As a senior, she took extra subjects to
prepare her for the pursuit of a teaching certificate. In the
early 1900's, it was possible to teach school without a college
degree by passing a proficiency test leading to a "teaching
certificate". On Sundays, she didn't do anything except study.
Since no one was usually at home (that was a day to go
"visiting"), she would walk from the kitchen, through the dining
room, the living room, the pantry and back to the kitchen reading
aloud. In physiology, she had to trace a ham sandwich through the
digestive tract and a drop of blood through the circulatory system
in addition to naming all the bones and muscles in the body.
On school days, she walked back and forth
between high school and the farm (about 1 1/2 miles); occasionally
a neighbor would come by and give her a ride. When she got home
she had chores to do such as washing the milk cans, feeding the
chickens, helping with supper, washing dishes, etc. There wasn't a
lot of time for studying after the chores were finished.
She took the certification exam in
Waukegan, in March, 1919. When Mr. Adams, the high school
superintendent, gave her her grades and saw the '99' in
physiology, he said, "Why, Ida, I think instead of teaching
school, you should study to be a doctor." But she didn't pass
history or geography; always her two easiest subjects. It was
because the tests were mostly about current events such as World
War I. She remembers that one of the questions was about the
Dardenells, which she knew nothing about. Current events were not
easily available to her as her family had no radio or newspapers
at home. But to this day, history is her favorite subject and her
favorite books are biographies and other history books.
Ida's parents bought their first car, a
Ford, in 1914. When she was ready to graduate from high school,
her father stopped by the school to pick her up to take her to
Waukegan to buy a graduation dress. A storm came up and before
they could put the top up on the car, it started to pour and they
both got soaked. Her father said they called it a "one man top"
because that was all it was supposed to take to put it up, but Ida
said it was more like a "one man, two women top". It was really
difficult to put it up with the wind blowing and rain coming down.
After graduation, she went to DeKalb
Normal School for 6 weeks to prepare to take the teacher
certification test. If she had passed all the subjects on the
exam she took previously in Waukegan, then she would not have had
to go to DeKalb. The exam was held for two days in Sycamore, IL,
a short distance from DeKalb. Ida remembers the day of the test
as an extremely hot day and the motion of the streetcar that they
took made many of the students quite ill. It was difficult to
take the tests under those conditions and Ida had no confidence
that she had passed the tests.
When she returned home, she learned that
a Mr. White had asked for her to come and teach at Hockaday
School. It was located just east of Millburn, close to the
Millburn Cemetery. Her father told him that she didn't have her
teaching certificate yet. Mr. White said that that didn't matter,
that they knew her family and knew they were hard workers, and
they needed a teacher.
Once Ida learned that she had passed the
teacher's exam, her father took her to Mr. White's to discuss
teaching at Hockaday. Mr. White wasn't home so they went to see
Mr. Jamieson, the local blacksmith. He asked Mother how much
salary she wanted. She replied that she wasn't sure...how much
were they willing to pay? (She had already discussed salary with
Anita Hucker, who had taught at Hockaday the previous year. Anita
received $50 a month and had told Ida to ask for $55.) Mr.
Jamieson said "Would you come for $60?" She was just 18 years old
and that sounded like a lot of money, so she accepted immediately.
The school board forwarded this information to Mr. Simpson's
office, as required. However, Mr. Simpson, the county
superintendent of schools, did not want her to teach...he wanted
all of the teachers to have a college degree, not just a
certificate.
Before school started, Mr. Simpson held a
teacher's institute in Waukegan that lasted six days. Ida found a
place to stay for the week with some of her neighbor's relatives.
On the last day of the institute, as they were filing out, Mr.
Simpson pulled Ida aside and said, "Miss Runyard, I received
notification from the Hockaday School Board that they have hired
you to teach for eight months for $60 per month. You go back and
tell them that they have to have nine months of school, not eight.
They can pay you $50 a month and at the end of the year give you
a bonus of $30 which will total the $480 that your contract calls
for." She decided she wasn't going to tell them what he said
regarding the pay...she would just tell them that Mr. Simpson said
that they had to have nine months of school. When her Dad came to
take her home, they stopped in Millburn to tell Mr. Jamieson what
Mr. Simpson had said regarding nine months of school. Mr.
Jamieson thought that was odd since the previous year they had
less than 8 months due to many different problems and Mr. Simpson
hadn't said anything. So some members of the board went to see
Mr. Simpson. Of course, he told them what he had previously told
Ida....that they should spread the same salary over nine months
time.
When the board returned, they told Ida
what Mr. Simpson had told them about working another month but at
the same wages she would get for 8 months. Since this was her
first job, she had no experience negotiating a salary but replied:
"you said you would pay me $60 a month and that is what I want".
They brought her a new contract and after looking quickly at "9
months" and "$60/month", she started to sign it. Mr. Jamieson
stopped her and told her to always read anything
thoroughly....never to sign until she had read all of the fine
print. She said she had read all she wanted to know and Mr.
Jamieson acknowledged that the board was very pleased that she was
coming to Millburn to teach.
The first morning of school, she went to
a local home to get her school supplies. She wasn't sure what to
expect but was still shocked to learn that the only "supplies"
consisted of a box of chalk and a broom. Books were just scraps,
no textbooks as we know them now. The blackboard was just that...a
board painted black. There were seven or eight students the first
day. The second day brought a couple more students. A few weeks
later, the people at Newport School kicked out their teacher and
asked Ida to teach their kids. She said it would take time away
from the kids she was hired to teach so they would have to get
permission from the school board. The man from Newport came back
in about an hour and said Mr. White said it would be all right. So
the next day she had three more kids.
Ida originally lived with one of the
local families but there was so much chaos and stress in that
family that Dr. Jamieson asked her to come live with them. They
had a daughter, Doris, who was unable to attend school and was
being tutored at home. Ida taught her in return for room and
board.
Each Friday afternoon, Ida's father took
her home for the weekend. The roads were not very good so in bad
weather if there was snow, he used a bobsled instead of the car.
The school had two front doors, boys
entered through one door and the girls used the other. The
students had individual desks but used benches at the front of the
room during group reading lessons. School started at 9:00 a.m.,
lunch was at noon when the kids ate what they had brought from
home, and then they were dismissed at 4:00 p.m. Some of the
students that Ida remembers teaching are Jessie Ann Strang,
Kenneth Denman, Richard Martin, and Clifford Hook.
There were a couple of other local
schools who wanted to consolidate with Hockaday...Dodge and Grubb,
so five more kids came in early Spring. Some of the kids from
these other schools had a reputation of being pretty tough. It
was going to be a challenge to teach them as they knew she was a
new teacher. The first day, when the toughest one came in the
door, his lunch box flew open and everything fell out. Ida got
down and picked up the food, cleaned it off and showed him where
to sit. He ended up being the nicest, most cooperative student.
One of her memories is about some of the kids who were so dirty
that they had lice. They went home and said they got it from the
teacher.
Near the end of the year she had a total
of 25 students, so the board raised her wages to $75 a month for
April and May. One of the new students was 17, she was only 18,
but when he asked her how old she was, she said "Oh, 46!" He went
home and told his family that his teacher was 46. His family was
shocked because they thought she looked so young. The boy insisted
that that was what she said. Ida was afraid that if he knew she
was only a year older, he would be harder to manage.
Leslie Bonner, the Denmans, Clarence
Bonner, Mr. White, and Mr. Jamieson were on the school board. The
1919-1920 school year was the last for Hockaday School. In
September, 1920, the children entered the new Millburn School,
built on Highway 45, just south of the village.
In the Spring, Mr. White asked her to
teach at Oakland School....he was also on the board there. When he
asked her to put in an application, she didn't know how to write
one as she had no experience. Then Paul Ferris came to see her
and asked her to come teach at Emmons School...right across the
road from her parents' home. She didn't think she should teach
the neighbors' kids....she also didn't think they would want to
pay $110 a month, the amount that Oakland had quoted, but they
said they would. She thought how nice it would be to live across
the road from the school as she had to start a fire each morning.
If she were right across the road, she could go back home and
clean up for school. Also at night she could clean after the kids
had gone home. So she taught at Emmons for 5 years. She said she
would have taught longer but a neighbor thought she should teach
cheaper since she was living at home. She asked him if her Dad
should have to keep the teacher? When he didn't know how to
answer that, she suggested that she would come stay with him for
part of the year and he could keep the teacher.