Sunday, October 30, 2011

Sentimental Sunday: Mark's Schools, Grades 1-7

The prompt for Week 44 of 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is Elementary School.  I'm going to continue the theme and talk about the schools my husband Mark attended for first through seventh grades (and a little bit of eighth grade too).

Describe your grammar/elementary school (or schools). Were they big or small? Are any of these schools still in existence today? If so, how have they changed since you went there?

Mark went to Travis Elementary in Corpus Christi, Texas, for first grade and the first semester of second grade.  The school still exists today, although in a newer building.  In January 1949, his family moved to the Myrtle Grove area of Pensacola, Florida.  Myrtle Grove Elementary, placed in service in 1936, was Mark's school for the rest of second grade through sixth grade.  Here's how it looks today:
source:  http://www.escambia.k12.fl.us/schscnts/myre/Master/Images/MGSchool.jpg
I found a picture among the many that Mark's sister recently gave me, that I think might be the same school (I think Mark might be kneeling on the far right):Mark describes the area as being fairly rural when they lived there, but Pensacola seems to have grown up around it. I looked for three of their addresses on Google Maps street view, and only one looks like it might have in the late 1940s and early 1950s. So I suspect the population of the school has changed as well.  The school did undergo some renovations and additions in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Mark started middle school at W. A. Blount Junior High School, also in Pensacola.  He attended this school in seventh grade and for the first six weeks of eighth grade, before his family moved to Guam.  The school was closed in 1982, although the building still stands today.

I love the way school pictures were done at Mark's schools - having the year printed on the front of the pictures is so convenient!  I believe the reason there is no second grade picture was because of the family's mid-year move; before photographs were taken at Travis Elementary, but after photographs had been taken at Myrtle Grove Elementary.

© Amanda Pape - 2011 - click here to e-mail me.

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