Page 58 - Adobe Photoshop PDF

school principal, Miss Arbuckle, informed us that there was a tradition
for such expenditure and we were committed to paying an artist $100
each year to pay for an additional painting that was to be provided every
second year. I proposed that the expense be deleted from the budget.
Under Miss Arbuckle’s beady eyes, only a couple of students dared sup-
port me in voting to delete the item. I thought it was wrong, so I pro-
posed the same action in the two following years. The voting each year
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anger only increased in subsequent two years.
Miss Franke, the librarian, was noted for the strict silence she
insisted upon in our daily library period. She was a clever psychologist.
She asked me – a talker – and several others to be her “monitors” to
maintain silence, to check on any visitors, etc. As a result, we “moni-
tors” were silent. In any case, I loved to read and always enjoyed any
library period in school.
I talked too much in junior high, both in class and out. I needed
to develop self-discipline. I was actually kicked out of my French class
for the last three weeks of the school year for talking. I needed to de-
velop self-discipline.
In those years there was an annual patriotic oratorical contest
for ninth graders in each junior high school in Salt Lake. The contest
was sponsored by the Gold Star Mothers (these were ladies who had
lost a son in World War I). I wrote my own speech (nearly all the other
entrants, I found later, had substantial help from a parent). Judges from
outside the school listened to our speeches. I was declared the winner. It
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Later, the winner from each junior high school in the city was
invited to deliver his or her speech in front of a meeting of the Gold Star
Mothers in their clubhouse in Memory Grove (It was interesting to me
in later years that several of these students were prominent at the Uni-
versity of Utah). The Gold Star Mothers gave us each a leather-bound
dictionary, which I still have.
The work of researching and writing a speech was excellent
training for which I am grateful. Learning to stand in front of a group of
people and deliver a speech was an important skill all my life. The expe-

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