Remembering Elementary School Days

I have many memories about attending school when I was a child. I loved learning, but sometimes there were personal obstacles I had to face that made school a little less enjoyable. Some obstacles I learned to overcome quickly, but others took more time.

I began my school years at Sacred Heart in Danbury. I never questioned why this child from an Episcopalian family was attending a Catholic school. I often wonder why I didn’t ask, but before it occurred to me, everyone who might have known the answer had died. In spite of that, I think I have come up with the most obvious reason for my attendance there.

The school was located only one street away from where I lived. Because my mother worked nights, my grandmother was my caregiver during the day. She had a heart condition, so perhaps it had been arranged that I would attend the school that was closest to where we lived so she didn’t have to walk me to school. A friend told me recently that Catholic schools did accept non-Catholic students then, but an extra payment or donation would have been required in addition to tuition.

At first I was really afraid of the nuns in their long black habits, veils, and rosary beads. I had never seen anyone dressed like that before. I was so upset one day that I ran home during lunch hour recess, hoping my grandmother would let me stay. She comforted me and then sent me right back to school.

I never was tempted to do that again. I became comfortable with the nuns, especially the one who taught our class. I don’t remember her name, but I remember her sweet face and nice smile. And she was very nice to me. Perhaps she felt sorry for me because I was so uncomfortable with the unfamiliar church services and religious instructions that were part of our school days.

That was the year when I caught almost every childhood illness and overall lost about a month of school. Years later I found my report card and was pleasantly surprised that the teacher had praised my efforts in catching up with the class despite my frequent absences. 

For grades two through eight, I attended the Consolidated School (now Center School) in Brookfield. It was a difficult transition, from Catholic school to public school. Because of my mother’s marriage to Stanley Gurski, I also had a new father as well as new grandmother, uncles, and cousins. It was a year of many changes, so it’s no wonder that I have no strong memories of second grade.

Third grade was different, and perhaps it was because I received some special attention. I owe it to our teacher, Mrs. Martin, that anyone is able to read my handwriting. My printing was adequate, but my cursive was so very small you couldn’t distinguish the letters from each other. I remember the time she spent with me after school, showing me how to write larger without overly compensating. She had so much patience.

I don’t know what was going on during fourth grade, but nothing seems to stand out. I loved to learn, though I was not so thrilled about oral reports and current events. I think fourth grade was when I first became uncomfortable speaking in front of the class.

From my desk I could participate, but there was something about standing up and having all eyes on me that made me want to run for cover. This shyness lasted throughout the years until high school, when one of my teachers there helped me confront my fears and have more self-confidence in making oral presentations.

One of my teachers obviously loved flowers. While covering an event as editor of The Brookfield Journal years ago, I spent a few minutes talking with Mrs. Tucker, my fifth-grade teacher. She told me she would always remember how I had once brought her a fringed gentian, now an endangered species but plentiful in the woods on our farm.

When I was 12, I received a gift of my first camera, and I often took it to school to take photographs of friends and teachers. I treasure these pictures as well as the photograph of our graduating class. Those 30 girls and boys are an important part of my memories of the Consolidated School. That June was the last time we would be together. Most of us went on to Danbury High School, but others attended private or other local schools, such as Newtown High or Henry Abbott Technical School. Our time together was at a close.

The teachers at the Consolidated School were among some of the best I ever had. They prepared us well for high school and for life. Many of the things that I enjoy doing today and the way I live my life were rooted in that small, white schoolhouse on Obtuse Hill.

From City Sidewalks to Country Road

I was asked recently if I am a lifelong resident of Brookfield. Unlike my adoptive father, Stanley Gurski, who was born in the house that once occupied the site of the Assembly of God Church, I could best be described as a long-time resident. It was not until my mother married Stanley that we moved to Brookfield. I was seven years old. 

I was born in Danbury Hospital, and for the first six years of my life lived in Danbury and for a short time in Bethel.

I remember walking with my grandmother from our house on Prospect Street to the stores on Main Street, the major shopping area for the city in those days before malls. You could find almost anything you wanted on Main Street, from grocery stores to shoe stores. Main Street was also where the movie theaters, library, post office and Hotel Green were. Main Street’s stores and sidewalks were social gathering places, where friends and neighbors would meet while shopping or having a bite to eat at a store’s lunch counter.

I loved sidewalks. Even as a young child, I could walk safely by myself to visit my friends down the street. After school and on weekends, my grandmother would only need to watch out the window to make sure I arrived at my destination.

I attended first grade at Sacred Heart School, and walked to school every day, following a path through a neighbor’s yard. The school was located one street away so it wasn’t a long walk, and I was never alone because other children also used the shortcut. When I was older and visited my grandmother, I would sometimes follow the sidewalk around the entire block so I could walk by the school, trying to remember my year there or the names of children I knew then.

I still don’t remember much about my first grade experience except that it was the year when I caught most of the childhood illnesses and was absent a lot. It was also a year of change in my life when we moved to Brookfield.

Here in Brookfield, I had to walk to the Consolidated School (now Center School) from our farm on Obtuse Hill Road. What was new to this child of the city was that there were no sidewalks. The only sidewalk was the one that still runs along Route 25 in Brookfield Center and up Long Meadow Hill Road. It was strange to me to walk along the side of the road with no protective sidewalk.

The Consolidated School was opened in 1938 and replaced one-room schoolhouses located throughout the town. The school as it appears today includes additions, the one on the western side, was being constructed when I was in eighth grade. That addition was built on the site of one of our playgrounds. 

Several years ago I took my grandson Jonathan to the open house for the addition constructed on the eastern side of the school. I wanted him to see where I went to school for seven years, but I don’t think he was impressed. It was just another school building to him.

To me, it was a quest for my past. What I sought, as we walked through the hallways, was the little Consolidated School of my memories in the midst of the new, larger, more modern Center School. Sadly for me, there was little to find that was familiar. Among many other changes, my sixth grade classroom and our school’s little library had been swallowed up in the additions; the playgrounds on both sides of the school had disappeared.

I remember playing on the rocks near the ball field on the eastern side of the school. I and other little girls also played “house” among the trees nearby. Before that addition was built, I remember wondering if the small rock walls we built to resemble rooms still existed, and if they were used for the same purpose by other little girls all those years later.

When I attended the Consolidated School, there were classrooms encompassing first to eighth grade. My eighth grade class numbered 31 students at the time of our graduation. I would imagine that the other seven grades had a similar number of children so there were probably less than 300 students in the entire school.

The Consolidated School had a gymnasium that also served as an auditorium. Our eighth grade graduation was held there. There was no music room, and I remember the music teacher wheeling the piano into the classroom when it was our turn for class. We also had dancing lessons. It was there I had my first introduction to square dancing, which I learned to love.

There was a just a touch of home economics, in that we girls had a “sewing” session. I don’t know what the boys did during that time. The only thing I do know is that I never sewed a stitch and no one, much less the teacher, seemed to care.   

Unlike today, the Consolidated School was the only primary school in Brookfield.. There was no high school. Following eighth grade, students either attended Danbury High School, Newtown High School, Henry Abbott Technical School or private school for grades nine to 12.

Eighth grade was the last year I walked to school. I had learned to love walking on the side of the road, where we could pick bittersweet or wildflowers for our teacher on our way, rather than through a neighbor’s yard or on a sidewalk. Those years were now over. For the next four years, I would wait in front of my grandmother’s house with my cousin Helen for the bus that would take us to Danbury High School.