Remembering One Mary Culp and her very special lessons
I’ve been gone from these Pastimes of yesteryear in Warren, but some true memories of the early 1970s came back to me with events of late.
A lovely and literate classmate, Deborah Armstrong Carpenter who has been in Warren these 51 years since our graduation from WHS, posted something on a Facebook post from “Shadows Within My Mind,” a verse from Emily Dickinson.
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“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
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Another very literate classmate, who has always had a self-confident way with words and artistic images, Chrystal Norton Corcoran, who has been out in California for decades, but always just a memory away from some special childhood times in Warren, answered back, to how she loved this particular line of poetry.
By Maylon Rice
Saline River Chronicle Feature Contributor
I replied back that this post jarred me back into my consciousness of all the loving care of one Mary Culp, a little thin slip of an English and Speech teacher at Warren High.
She perhaps more than any other instructor, opened the vast world of literature, art and music for me. Her tutelage of fine writing and the English language has meant so much to me over the years.
“Few could read and recite her (Dickinson’s) lines like Mary Culp,” I answered back to the Facebook post. “She was the best.”
Mary Culp was a hard task master of homework and writing, who gave legions of us, a true appreciation for the written word, the fine brush stroke of a painting, or the ear to truly hear a piece of music for what it was saying to us as individuals.
As this seemingly instant back-and-forth between friends, one more than 250 miles north from Bradley County, another 3,000 miles on the California coast and Debbie, just right there close, carried on Facebook memories that are truly golden.
Armstrong remembered Ms. Culp once bringing in a 33 1/3 LP album to the classroom. Ms. Culp, no doubt then commandeered one of the two or three ancient turntables in the WHS Audio Visual Closet – a real, tiny closet down near the principal’s office in the first floor of the old two-story, Works Progress Administration High School on West Pine Street, to begin a writing assignment.
I said it was “earth shaking,” socially, politically and academically from the standard teaching methods of Arkansas at the time.
Neither of them disagreed.
It was in that sweet season after basketball season and the spring sunshine made any afternoon classes so difficult to keep a teenager’s attention, when she played a Moody Blues album, mostly instrumental music.
“Now write what this music and what it was conveying to each of us as an individual,” she said.
At first, the pencils on the paper were quiet, but soon, there began a slow, but steady of hearing those No. 2 yellow pencils glide across those white and blue lined, three-ring notebook sheets.
Some of us got caught up still writing by the sound of the class bell.
Many got done.
One classmate, who had oh, such a horrible childhood at her humble home in Warren, I remember had tears running down her face when going to the front to drop off her submission, shortly before the bell.
I still recall Mary Culp, abruptly standing upon seeing this girls’ emotions. Quickly Ms. Culp was handing her a tissue (kept faithfully on her spartan, wooden desk) and reaching out to squeeze the child’s hand.
She steered her silently out into the hall, but came quickly back inside the class. In a minute or two the bell rang.
That young lady, composed and glad for the “break” strode back in gathered her things, and gave Ms. Culp a whispered “thank you,” and was off to the next class.
One of my friends recalls that “Nights In White Satin,” was on that recording.
Wow, what a Pastime from Debbie and Chrystal.
What a Pastime it is to recall as classes begin at a new Warren High, what memories might be felt and shared a half century from this term from a single teacher unafraid to reach out to their students with new and innovative techniques – and a true act of empathy and compassion.
