[NFBWV-Talk] FW: She had an anteater

Wed Feb 2 14:42:45 UTC 2022

This was a great article and I enjoyed reading it. This is someone I
would have enjoyed knowing. I worked in the building on the institute
campus that housed the school. The building was rumored to be haunted
and I have no doubt that it probably was. According to Sharon Fridley,
a shooting took place on the first floor of that building. I believe
the principal shot himself in the auditorium. The building was listed
on the list of historic places but when the rehabilitation campus was
closed, I do not believe that building remained standing when the
property was sold. Even when the district office was located there,
near the end of the time I worked there, it was not in good repair.
The roof leaked, part of the ceiling in the old conference room
colapsed, and the electrical system was not very safe.

On 2/1/22, cs.nfbwv via NFBWV-Talk <nfbwv-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> What a wonderful article. Thank you so much for sharing it. I wish we
> would’ve known all this when we had her as a teacher. We were blessed to
> have her. I wonder who the student was that she supervise student teaching.
> I wonder if it was Sharon Fridley.
>
> Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
> ________________________________
> From: NFBWV-Talk <nfbwv-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> on behalf of Karen Swauger
> via NFBWV-Talk <nfbwv-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2022 11:34:57 AM
> To: nfbwv-talk at nfbnet.org <nfbwv-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Karen Swauger <karen at pmpmail.com>
> Subject: [NFBWV-Talk] FW: She had an anteater
>
>
> karen
>
> Original Message:
> From: The Blind History Lady <theblindhistorylady at gmail.com>
> To: karen at pmpmail.com
> Subject: She had an anteater
> Date:
> Tue, 1 Feb 2022 06:00:22 -0500 (EST)
>
> She had an anteater  Hello Blind History Lady Fans: One of my more
> interesting ancestors this past year is Emily Raspberry. There was so
> little written about her and yet, so much to tell. Following is a glimpse
> into what I have learned of this incredibly strong woman.    Born December
> 12, 1915, in Alabama, Emily came down with the flu at age four. When Emily
> recovered from the flu, she was totally blind. Her little sister, died from
> the flu on Dec 20, 1918.   Her mother sent Emily to public school with her
> older brother. No accommodations for a blind-black child were possible, so
> Emily listened and participated in class orally, not learning to read or
> write. Finally, Emily was enrolled at the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf
> and Blind in the fall of 1926.   Emily was homesick, but there was so much
> to learn. In only two weeks she mastered the braille code and read all 130
> books the school owned. A new world opened to Emily. She had a glimpse of
> the sighted world and she wanted to be a part of it.    Her teachers were
> impressed with Emily's quick accomplishment of the braille code and placed
> her in the upper class. She studied hard to cram in several years of
> learning into her first year.   Emily returned home for the first time, on
> May 22, 1927, to find her mother gravely ill. Emily was home only a few
> hours before her mother died.   A funeral was planned in days. After the
> funeral, Emily was told she would live with her half-sister, in West
> Virginia.   She felt the joy of returning home to show how well she, as a
> blind child could learn and be successful, to the shock of the death of her
> mother and heart-wrenching separation from her family.    Emily was
> enrolled in the West Virginia School for The Colored Blind almost
> immediately. She found they had twice the braille books in their library
> and magazines in braille.  Emily threw herself into her studies.  Classes
> were harder than in Alabama.    Unlike other schools, West Virginia held
> unsegregated classes including both the deaf and the blind students. The
> boys had one dorm and the girls the other. There were no separate dorms for
> the blind and deaf students. Rooms were crowded, sometimes three or four
> boys shared a room that would have been considered small for two.    There
> is no record of when Emily graduated, but it is believed to be either 1932
> or 1933. Emily enrolled at the West Virginia State College for Negro's in
> Dunbar. At the end of her first year of college in 1935, she knew she
> wanted to be a teacher in a school for the blind. Her hope was to share her
> love of reading and literature to open the world for other blind-colored
> students to the possibilities of the outside world.   She graduated in 1938
> and continued classes through the West Virginia State College, enabling her
> to become a certified teacher of the blind. She received her master's
> degree from Hampton University.   Emily started as an academic teacher in
> the primary grades at the West Virginia School for the Colored Blind in
> 1940 in Institute (Clarksburg), West Virginia. She taught reading and
> writing for the blind kids and deaf children in her classes.    On her
> desk, she had a toy anteater. Over the years, the anteater showed its wear.
> Emily decided the toy needed to be disposed of. Knowing her students loved
> the anteater, frequently saying hello or goodbye to it, she set up a
> funeral for the anteater. The class went out and dug a shallow grave for
> the toy, placed it in the grave and held a short service.    When the
> school for the white, in Romney, and the school for the colored combined in
> 1955, Emily was one of only three teachers from the colored school that
> made the transfer. Not all the colored students from Clarksville
> transitioned to Romney.    The staff at Romney were friendly but Emily did
> not mix socially. For at least the first year, Emily took a room in the
> student dorms as did the other single teachers. As a single woman, and the
> only black faculty in the blind department, she may have felt out of place.
>    In Reading classes, when she recognized a spark, she assigned a poetry
> lesson for spelling class to bring out the creativity of the students. The
> children were encouraged to write a poem including all of the spelling
> words for the week. In her braille classes, she taught the students to work
> with a slate and stylus, while other teachers used the Perkins Braille
> Writer.    She incorporated listening to the radio into her classes to
> ensure student's interest. Lessons were assigned to write about what they
> heard on the radio. The eighth-grade class in 1956, wrote a quiz show based
> on the show, "The Big Surprise."   Emily supervised school trips to watch
> plays or listen to concerts. For years, Emily had season tickets to the
> Cumberland Classical Musical Series. Each year, Emily paid for four student
> season passes with an interest in music. She took the students by bus or
> driver, to the concerts.    When a movie of interest, mostly historical
> films such as Man of All Seasons, she asked students to accompany her to
> the movie theater in Romney. She paid for their tickets and treated the
> kids to their own box of popcorn.     A memorable year was 1967 when she
> was chosen to supervise a student teacher. Emily was honored and proud as
> the student teacher was a former blind student.    In 1969, Emily taught
> health. Most likely not her favorite subject, but she entered the class
> with the same enthusiasm as her English classes, even though textbooks were
> more than twenty years old. One assignment was to make up word puzzles
> relating to their health lessons. When the project was over, the best
> questions were put into an article for school newspaper, The Tablet to show
> how much her students learned that semester.   Later, she took an apartment
> above a restaurant. Rickety wooden stairs led to her door. The apartment
> overlooked Main street. The entire space may have been no more than 900
> square feet.    Emily frequently took the Greyhound but to Washington D. C.
> When a student of hers also rode the bus, she talked to them about their
> schoolwork or family. In class, Emily mentioned her travels to D. C.
> commenting on the friendliness of the staff to her, and sadness that maids
> in the hotels were paid so little.    Other blind teachers from the school
> asked to have their meat cut or their tea poured from the pot on the table,
> but not Emily. She insisted she would cut her own meat and pour her own tea
> and serve herself.      Summer vacations were never wasted. She took
> classes at Harvard. In 1961 she worked as a proofreader for Perkins Braille
> Press. Vacations meant in exhibits at the planetarium, museums, concerts,
> exhibits on history and more, usually in Boston. There were trips to attend
> conventions of the AAWB of which she was a member.   At one concert, she
> spoke briefly to Senator Edward Kennedy, also attending. Their meeting was
> exciting for Emily, and she took the news back to her students of her
> encounter with a man who would make history.      She retired at the end of
> the 1977 school term and moved to Boston. Emily kept in touch with some of
> the Romney residents. They wrote to her in print, and she answered them in
> print. She died September 12, 1988, in Vermont.  If you would like to
> schedule a presentation contact me, Peggy Chong, at
> theblindhistorylady at gmail.com You can read more of my Books at
> https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/24325
> www.theblindhistorylady.com<http://www.theblindhistorylady.com>
> . ? The Blind History Lady | 14152 E Linvale Pl, 201, Aurora, CO 80014
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-- 
Michelle McKeller
Employment Specialist  | WorkForce West Virginia
1900 Kanawha Blvd E, Suite 300
Charleston, WV 25305
P: 304-558-7024

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