*from the archive and oh maybe the early 2000s? who knows at this point, but, in increments I will share and, knock wood, you will enjoy, this old-ish story. Mildred Jensen was an actual math teacher I had in middle school, she was tall and leggy, but everything else is entirely fictional here. I really liked her, a lot, even if – at the end of her career when I had her as an instructor – she was showing not only her age but the age of some of her ideas (boys are better at measuring things, for one).
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A friend, an acquaintance really, whose family bought eggs and milk from Mildred’s father, offered to drive her to the college, which his son was also attending, about to begin his second year. Her parents accepted the ride for their daughter gratefully; her mother helped her clean and pack one of the old bags they kept in the attic, which her belongings barely filled, even with the new dress, shoes and notebooks she had saved all year to buy. As the small college bound party pulled out of the dirt road that led to her home, Mildred was gripped with terror at the all that was ahead of her, all that would change because she was leaving her family, the farm, and all she had ever known, in this good place. She said little on the drive while her host and his son, a boy she barely knew, chattered gaily about the passing scenery and how the boy looked forward to seeing his college friends once more. Would she be as carefree and confident the following year? Would she make good, as she must?
Mildred boarded on campus in a small room she shared with two other girls like her, on scholarship, in a house where they would help serve breakfast and dinner to girls unlike themselves, girls who were paying full price for, as they joked, an MRS degree. It took Mildred more than a week to figure that out, feeling naïve and stupid when she did so, an unusual feeling for the smartest girl ever to come out of Gilberton. Yet she knew how lucky she was, dismissing those girls, and kept her head, listening in the dark while one of her roommates cried herself to sleep every night until abruptly she disappeared, going home for the weekend of Columbus Day never to return. The thought of giving up a scholarship, of abandoning one’s path, was appalling to Mildred, but then, unlike so many of the women she observed, she knew she was strong, she felt strong, inside and out, despite the terror of that first day, that first week, in this new place and her new life. And she was having fun; classes were large, larger than any she had ever taken before, the pace was faster, too, and yet all of it, all of it, was like a buffet of the very best kind, a buffet for the mind and spirit, the image of this, coming to her as she remembered church suppers back home, made her smile.
Over time she became friends with several other girls like herself, smart, strong, determined young women, determined to be teachers, to educate a nation. They had an important mission and they knew it; it was all part of the hushed anxiety of a time leading up to the war. Hitler, it was said, was hoping to outdo, outperform and out-invent the scientists and mathematicians of other western countries, especially England, France and the U.S. The message was clear, they all felt it, compete or die. She listened to the news on a small radio, belonging to the girl who had replaced the student who left, when, dishes and other chores done, they retreated to their room to read and do their homework. She’d always believed there was no point in worrying over what was coming, especially if you couldn’t do anything to stop it, although sometimes, crossing the campus, her heart broke just a little looking at the young men gathered here and there, laughing, trying to be as carefree as they could, knowing what might come.
Would her brother, as her father did for the Great War, leave the farm to serve? How could he not, if he were needed? And would he survive? Her younger brothers were both still in high school; surely all three boys would not, could not, be called up? Everyone – the boys and men in those groups, along with the editorials she occasionally read – said the war, if and when their turn to fight came, would soon be over, but one of her professors told the class ‘they always say that’; his son had died in the First World War, she later learned. His heartache over what was coming was palpable, and she dreaded what might be, what might happen, to those she loved, back home in the valley, her classmates new and old, and her silly young brothers. She rigorously said her nightly prayers, resolutely vowing to turn her eyes and mind back to something she could control: math and her other studies.
Graduating with honors, Mildred began her career in the fall of 1940, at a small rural central school in a town less than twenty miles from her childhood home, only ten miles from the county seat of Delville. She couldn’t believe, in those first weeks, that she was to be paid, and paid so much, to do the work she loved. This elation went away eventually, but she continued to feel very lucky, inspired and blessed, and blessed too that the building was new, well run, well kept, and filled with unfamiliar faces to know and, perhaps, befriend. And every day, she felt this, was an opportunity to make a difference, and if she sometimes grew impatient with some of the children, the ones who really and truly seemed to just not want to learn, she simply did what her mother had taught her all those years before, while churning butter or mixing soap from ashes and lye: take a deep breath and keep on ‘til it’s done.