After the sixth grade, Gene “went to Eustace School to finish my education. The first year at Eustace, I had to go to a temporary building because the old school burned down. We called it the Cow Shed, because it was a long building like a cow shed and held several classes.”
Seventh grade was “probably the lowest point of my school life,” Gene later wrote. First, he developed appendicitis and had to have his appendix removed. “In those days they kept you in hospital at least a week, then you had to stay in bed at home at least a week, before you could even get up.” The hospital was actually an old house converted into a hospital by Dr. L.L. Cockerell. Gene’s dad had to borrow $125 to pay the hospital.
The biggest problem came in the aftermath of the surgery. Hubert Wheat, Gene’s seventh grade teacher, “failed me. It wasn’t on grades either. He told Dad I was too young, was the reason he failed me, so I had to do the 7th grade over.”
Dad had told me this story before. It still bothered him decades after it happened. But as he wrote about it in the early 1990s, he saw something different in the experience. “As I write this, something was reveiled [sic] to me I had never in my life thought about. I probably would never have met Hilda Noble in my senior year.”
This made me wonder about something else. If Dad had finished school one year earlier, he probably would have entered the Army one year earlier in 1943. As it was, he never saw combat in the Pacific because he didn’t make it in time. Graduate one year earlier, and my tender-hearted dad may have had a very different life.
So, here’s a family tip of the hat to teacher Hubert Wheat, whom I’m sure has passed on by now. Wheat angered my dad at the time and for a long time afterward, but that teacher also paved the way for the rest of Gene’s life.
[Source: This reaction is taken from an Internet blog post by Ferrell Foster, “Sometimes it takes a while to see a blessing,” https://ferrellfoster.com/2018/04/08/sometimes-it-takes-a-while-to-see-a-blessing/%5D
Copyright © 2020 Ferrell Foster
