Chapter 1: Extraordinary Teachers

Like the True Grit entry, this section was seredipitous for me in my own life this week as I met with my daughter's teacher (Ellie is six and in first grade like mom is during this chapter).  Mom's introduction to her first grade teacher is in bold, then Juanita's section follows.

Ellie's art, now age six.

Juanita Conrad was the tutor selected by the school system to come to our house each day and teach me First Grade.  We had wonderful times learning together, and she represented to me the quiet, still, knowing a person can achieve.  I don’t think anything could have upset her.  Her calm manner made learning easy.

One of my early childhood friends recently told me how jealous she was of my tutor and the little classroom that was set up in the den.  It had a desk, a chalk board, pens, pencils, and books right there.  It was amazing tome that this looked so enticing to someone in the regular public school system.

Our Story by Juanita Conrad

In the early 1940s we moved to Arlington Heights from downstate Illinois, when my husband accepted a teaching and coaching position at Arlington High School.  Soon we were members of the Methodist Meeting House on North Dunton Street.

One Sunday in 1946, we met a new family at church who wanted to join: Art, Lois & Janet Trever.  Janet was a bright-eyed preschooler who was eager to be enrolled in our Sunday School.  It seems that Lois, her mother, had enrolled Janet at the Presbyterian Church the week before (it was just one block down the street) before she discovered that she was in the wrong church.  Everyone had a good laugh over that one.   In a short time Lois was invited to become a teacher in the Primary Department and Art soon became active in the church as well.  He was to eventually become Chairman of the Building Committee when we built a new church one mile on the side of town.  That was quite a project.

When the time came for Janet to begin first grade she had difficulty with an eye problem and could not attend the public school.  Since I had been substitute teaching for District #25, Ralph Calbaugh, the Superintendent, asked whether I would “home teach” Janet and another little girl separately.  The district furnished the books and teaching supplies.  We followed the school curriculum, test, etc.  I first went to Janet’s home.  Trevers turned one room of their home into a classroom with a bulletin board, blackboard, etc  It was such fun teaching and we learned to know each other well.  She learned to read, to “print” the alphabet, to do math and other things that first graders do.  I think Janet’s mother was sometimes around the corner “listening in.”  Janet reminded me of little sponges that were ready to soak up any information that was presented to them.

Since then it has been interesting for me to follow Janet’s life through grade school, high school, living overseas, having Andy (born on my birthday) then Sarah.  I have tried to keep track of their activities as they grew up and then in exciting professions.

Ellie's art, now age six.

We have been so impressed to see how bravely Janet is finding her way through her health problems.  She never gives up and many good things came from her determination.  What she has learned will help other with similar problems.  We take our hats off to you, Janet!

Chapter 1: In the Beginning

That's right, we're going ALL the way back!

I've added some photos, but the intro is just as she wrote it.  Enjoy...

Janet age 5.

I think I would have been a shy child, adolescent, and young adult dreaming of growing up to be a competent and well liked teacher (with inspiration on some days), a loving wife and mother living in a safe middle class community: security and preserving the status quo the major goals for which I’d strive. I think I would have made a good grandmother, a stable member of my community, local school district, and home church. I think my goal in life would have been to do the right thing, to make things look good (especially on the surface), to avoid rocking the boat and getting negative attention, to be considered by all a “nice” person. Since my female relatives generally die in their 90’s in nursing homes, that probably would have been my lot as well.

Jan age 8.

But this was never to be. My bouts with cancer throughout my life have left me at the mercy of any staggering drunk, precocious child, or agitated sojourner who happens to cross my path and loudly comment on my appearance. Life’s timing has often left me without financial resources, questioning life’s fairness and meaning, struggling to get insurance, a roof over the heads of my children, and find a faith that would carry me through such rough times.

Jan on the far right in the back yard of the Dunton house, Arlington Heights, Ill.

At the same time, my brushes with cancer and the visible different in my face have brought into my life experience such extraordinary people who have enriched my life into dimensions I could never have imagined from my idyllic, safe, little world. The places I have been, the things I have done are so far from my original expectations of life. I have to come to recognize it as “stretching” into the new from the old. I am covered with stretch marks!

Jan as a teacher.

So many people have influenced and supported me these 53 years of my existence. At one point in 1992 I put out a call to friends across the country for guided imagery/visualization tapes to help me make it through a brutally rough time after the neutron radiation, and more than 30 tapes arrived in the mail in the next two weeks. I have decided to share some of these people with you as I write, to weave them into the story. I’ll begin with my mother.

Loie, mom's mom, sitting in the foreground.

(note: I can't describe my reaction to these photos.  I never saw my mother with two eyes, so her childhood pictures have always been a bit of an enigma.  In more ways than one, I can't recognize her as my mom until after she lost her eye.)