The Ekalaka Eagle - Your Community Builder

It’s been a long time since I have written an article for the Eagle, but a short time ago I was going through the “Shifting Scenes” books and came upon a very interesting family. It starts in Volume II on page 746. The names were William and Ruby Rowley. There are three or four pages about them.

One of my first thoughts was that every student used the name “Mister Rowley” — he may have been called Bill at Lions Club meetings but never by any student. In my opinion, he was the greatest teacher Carter County High School has ever had.

The article is long and I am going to pull parts from here and there and insert some of my encounters with him.

Let’s get some pre-history from the article written by Mr. Rowley himself.

“I was born March 3, 1903 at Clyde, Kansas to Charles Arthur Rowley and Rosa Wiler Rowley. I was the fifth child in a family of eleven children.

My father and mother had very little formal education. If I remember correctly, Dad had the equivalent of five school terms and mother three. Dad was a section foreman for the Union Pacific Railroad and felt that he had been severely handicapped by his limited education. By the time we children were five years old, ready for the first grade in Kansas at the time, we knew that we were expected to give our best to our school work.

During my high school years it was essential that I have employment during the school year and the summer. If I had not had the employment, I would have had to drop out of school. During these years I worked at different times in a restaurant, a dry cleaning and tailoring establishment and a general store. At the store it was my job to get there before 7:00 A.M. to get the fire going in and the big pot-bellied stove, wait on early customers, dust, and anything else that needed to be done. The proprietor usually arrived about eight o’clock along with the rest of the help. I left for school at 8:45. In the evening I was expected to be at the store fifteen minutes after school closed, and to work until 6:30. But Saturday was something else! As usual I arrived at 7:00 A.M., took an hour off at noon, another hour off at 6:00, and then I was at the mercy of the farmers who had come to town to sell their eggs and butter, do their shopping, and perhaps most of all, to do their visiting and to get caught up on the latest gossip. When all of them had come in for their crates and groceries, I could leave for home, but this was never before midnight–too often not before 1:00 or 1:30 A.M. For this I received $3.50 per week. But as I said before, without the work I could not have remained in school. The next year I received $5.00 per week.

The day after Labor Day of 1920, at 7:30 A.M. for the first time I entered the door of a school that I was to teach. I did not expect much in the way of equipment and supplies, and it was a good thing that I did not. In addition to the blackboards, the equipment consisted of a dozen double desks and a few single desks for the pupils, a table with one drawer and a chair for the teacher, a water pail and dipper, and a few well worn erasers. In the drawer of the desk I found a register, a course of study, some chalk and a few sheets of construction paper. There were no reference books, library books or supplementary readers.

In the summer of 1925 I was informed by the E.L. Huff Teachers’ Agency, Missoula, Montana, that County Superintendent Jenny Carlson, had reported a vacancy in the principalship of the Ekalaka Elementary School. I mailed Mrs. Carlson an application and after some additional correspondence, I received a contract from Velva Whitney, Clerk of School District 15.

A week before school was scheduled to open, I arrived in Baker, Montana, and the next morning I came to Ekalaka on the mail stage with Murray Trout. We arrived in Ekalaka about noon, and after eating my lunch, I registered at the Fairview Hotel. Mrs. Lamb who owned and operated the hotel warned me that I would not be able to stay more than two days, as all of the rooms had been reserved for the duration of the murder trial that was to open in a couple of days. The next day I was fortunate enough to rent a very nice room at the DeLoss Hall home.”

More to come…