By Richard (“Dick”) Bartlett
My family lived in Industry, so I attended school there from the first grade through the twelfth. This was during my 1949-1950 school year to 1959-1960. At that time there were three local schools: the old grade school housing grades one through three; the more recent metal building housing grades four through eight, and the high school housing grades nine through twelve.
Fortunately, I had some very good teachers during my teenage years. I recall taking three years of math, for example, with Mrs. Hazel Sullivan, who taught Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. And the broadly capable Mrs.
Sullivan also taught my English III and English IV classes, so I came to know her very well. I also had Joseph Beckman as a teacher. He was a graduate student at Western Illinois State Teachers College in Macomb, and he taught Geometry in the first semester of my senior year and Calculus in the second semester. Mrs. Dorothy Underwood taught English during my freshman and sophomore years, and Mrs., Margaret McNeeley was my Social Sciences teacher.
Industrial Arts was taught by Sonny Gross and Richard Roe.
Like many male students, I took that subject during all four years of high school. Mr. Gross, who happened to be a race car driver, was also my Driver’s Ed teacher. And Richard Shreve taught General Science, Chemistry, and Physics. So, after graduation in 1960, I felt well-prepared as I enrolled at Western, which had recently become a university.
I was in many activities during those Industry High School years, too. I played French Horn in the school band, and I also played basketball (mostly as a bench warmer) and baseball. I became the full-time catcher for the Industry High School baseball team when I was still a freshman, and that happened because the present catcher’s father passed away, and so he (Carl Plank) had to resign from the team to take care of farming responsibilities at home.
On that team, I was the catcher for pitcher Dick Snowden, who was a senior. And when I was a senior, I also played with his little brother, Phil, who was a shortstop. The Snowdens were well-known in McDonough County, and they had eight boys and just one girl in the family. All of those boys were great athletes for Industry High School. I know much about that family because, in 1964, I married Mary Anne Snowden, the one girl among them, and we eventually had two daughters and four grandchildren. I also played baseball with teammates Jim Black, Wally Herman, Terry Mayo, Jake Toland, and Jerry Skiles, who were friends, and in general, I remain friends with teammates who are still living today.
I worked at the high school, too. When I was a junior and senior, I served as assistant custodian to Sam Farr. One of my memories of helping the custodian involved taking turkeys that the government gave for the lunch program at our school, to Krispy Kreme Bakery in Macomb, at Thanksgiving and Christmas times, so they could bake them for the special dinners that were served to the students on those occasions. I think we usually had about ten turkeys for them to bake and for us to enjoy.
I also remember that we had a prisoner of war camp (known as Camp Ellis) near Industry, and after World War II was over, the government gave away barracks, gyms, pick-up trucks, and cars. The school district received three of those barracks; two were used as shops for Industrial Arts and Agriculture, and one was used as a lunch room. In the summer of 1959 the school was also notified that it could have a Ford pick-up truck. Sam Farr and I took the school’s truck and a hitch top pull the Camp Ellis truck back to town if we couldn’t get it started. But we eventually did get the truck to run and just drove it back to our school. The boys in the Ag Shop then painted it. And in the following summer the school was notified that it could also have a Chevrolet four-door sedan. Mr. Farr and I went again for the car. But that time we had to pull the car back to the school. However, the agriculture students got the car running, and they painted it as well.
But Mr. Farr eventually had a serious operation and was unable to work for a while, so I became the head custodian for a time. One Saturday morning, after a basketball game the night before, I walked down to the school to clean up the gym—and also to clean the furnace. I opened the outside door with my key and began the long walk down the hallway— because the light switch was at the other end of the hallway, and I had to get to my cleaning supply closet as well. On the way down the dark hallway I stepped on some items that were strewn all over the floor. That was where we had a paper and pencil machine, but I knew instinctively that something was wrong. And I was scared. So, I put my back to the wall and moved along slowly to the office, to call the principal, Don Long. When I got to the office doo and stuck the key into the lock, the lock fell right on the floor. I realized then that there had been a break-in. I got to the phone and called Mr. Long, and he told me to check a certain spot to see if the money box was there, which had the basketball game receipts. I checked, and the money was gone, so then Mr. Long called the sheriff. All of that was an exciting, and scary, experience for me.
I graduated as the valedictorian of my class in 1960.
Academic effort was very highly regarded in my family, especially because my dad was the eighth grade teacher and the principal of the grade school in Industry. My mother had also been a teacher in her earlier years, so they emphasized the value of good grades. In fact, when I was a senior, I received one of the three teacher scholarships available at the school, from the State of Illinois, to support my college years. In that class, I was the only one to receive it, since I was the only graduate planning to become a teacher.
In my first two college years, Western Illinois University was on the quarter system, and my scholarship paid for the tuition. I only had to pay $18.75 for medical insurance during those two years at the university. Then Western was on the semester system, and again, I paid only for health insurance—and that was $24.50 for each year when I was a junior and senior. I drove top the university (twelve miles) each day, from Industry. And if we ever had bad weather, and I could not drive safely back home, I simply stayed at the Lamoine Hotel.
After graduating from Western Illinois University, I became a mathematics teacher at Quincy High School for thirty-one years—and then I taught at John Wood Community College for fourteen and a half years. I retired in 2008, after teaching for forty-five years. But I’ve always appreciated my own school experience in the village of Industry—which helped to prepare me for my university education and my meaningful teaching career that followed.
