| Maggie remembers middle school mischief |
By: MAGGIE LEE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Saturday, November 28, 2009 12:46 am
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I did something way back in 1934 that every so often comes back to haunt me. I was in middle school which in those days shared the building at Fourth and Union with the Senior High School. That building now belongs to Carleton College.
I know the year because it was the last year that Alberta Ackerman taught in the middle school. I can’t remember what she taught and her obituary does not tell.
My assigned seat in her classroom was right in the front row and about five feet from the teacher’s desk. Miss Ackerman did not use a standard teacher’s desk. What she had was a table with a stack of drawers underneath. Because she did not want us kids to see her legs while she was sitting at the desk, she had tacked a large piece of burlap across the back.
Well, somehow some of the tacks had given way and Miss Ackerman was busy with a hammer returning the burlap to its place. I remember being very amused to think that anyone would waste time staring at her spindly legs and I snorted, a snort worthy of a horse.
I guess I will never forget the dirty look I got from the kneeling teacher. She didn’t punish me. She didn’t need to!
Miss Ackerman was born in 1874 in Waseca County. When she was 10 years old, she moved with her family to Stanton. Twenty years later, in 1904, the family moved into Northfield. She called that house, at 803 College, home until her death in 1961.
She graduated from Mankato State College in 1901. There followed several years during which Miss Ackerman taught in normal schools. These were small districts where teachers were not required to have graduated from college. Why she chose to teach in these districts, I can’t imagine.
Places she taught (not all in normal schools) included Red Wing, LeSueur, Spring Valley, Browns Valley, Morris, Cannon Falls, Anoka, South St. Paul. She taught in Northfield from 1917 through 1934. She taught in summer sessions in Willmar and Redwood Falls. She also taught in summer sessions at Winona State College.
In other summers she attended classes at Columbia University, the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin.
When she was 87, she fell on the front porch of her home, breaking a hip. Complications of some sort followed this and she died at Northfield Hospital on Aug. 27, 1961.
Her obituary said that one of her hobbies was collecting newspaper clippings about former pupils. I remember that she was very pleased to learn that I was working at the News.
Her funeral was at the Methodist Church, a former pastor, the Rev. Richard G. Douglas of St. Paul, returning to preach at the service. Mary Zoe Scott, present-day Northfielder and a classmate of mine, played the organ.
—Reach Maggie Lee at 507-645-1119. |
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