Wichita, 1948
1948 was an interesting year for many reasons. New cars were now available, after being unavailable during WW II and in the years immediately thereafter as vehicle factories transitioned from making military to making civilian vehicles. Many people who had served in the military during the war were attending college on the GI Bill. Rationing had ended and if money was available, you could have new shoes (also not necessarily true during the war years). In the Presidential election, Kansans voted by 53.6% for Thomas Dewey (Republican) over Harry Truman (Democrat), but Truman won the national vote and served until 1952. Professional wrestling was a weekly event in the summer at the Forum and other venues. On June the 17th, the temperature rose to 104 F and no one had air conditioning. On March 11, the temperature dropped to -3 F and many did not have central heat.
While we were only six years old, most of our parents found it safe to let us walk by ourselves to and from school. Some of us took our lunch to school in a small metal lunch box, and some of us walked home for lunch. After school, we often encountered the Yo-Yo man at a drugstore or similar venue near our school. He could do amazing things with a Yo-Yo, like walk-the-dog and other more difficult tricks.
Commercial entertainment was most likely the Saturday movies. More than one theater had these movies for very low cost, and the theaters were filled with young children (including you and me) enjoying the movies, vying for prizes during the live portion of each Saturday’s performance, and walking home when the show was over. There was usually a cartoon or two; a ‘to-be-continued’ adventure movie that seemed to never come to a conclusion; plus the live, on-stage performances; and occasionally, there was enough money for some popcorn. What a day! OK – more correctly, what a morning as the show was over, and one was home before lunch time.
First grade was quite a change from kindergarten or from life at home. One had to sit quietly (OK, some of us did not), pay attention, and learn all about Dick and Jane, who had very limited vocabularies and quite uninteresting lives. But one got to play on real playground equipment with other kids who were also having fun – well, most of the time. Sometimes they were starting school yard scraps, but no one was ever seriously injured. One soon learned how to deal with normal disagreements and only provoke others when the monitoring teacher was on the other side of the school yard.
Many of us were cleaned up Saturday night so that we could dress up and make our weekly visit to a local church on Sunday. Sunday dinner (our mid-day meal) after church was usually our largest and most involved meal of the week. It almost always had dessert! However, if there was a meal to be eaten out, or purchased and brought home, it was usually that meal – and not often.
Sunday brought another rare excitement – the weekly comics in the newspaper. Many of us partly learned to read by tuning the radio to the reader of the comics and following along with the colorful comics in our hands. There was no Sunday afternoon professional football on TV as none of us had TVs. As to phones, for most of us there was a single telephone tucked somewhere near the kitchen. A ringing phone was an event! More than a few of us had no phone.
By the time we made it to the 3rd or 4th grade, we had a weekly walk from school to a local church for Christian education. This federally-approved program was optional, but nearly all students attended. Gene Carter remembers that his mother refused permission for him to participate; he stayed at school and read. Mostly, we enjoyed the lightly-monitored walk to and from the church. Those walks, with their multiple distractions, were probably more interesting to many than whatever was going on at church. After one year, constitutional issues about the separation of church and state were being raised at the federal level, and the program was canceled for Wichita public schools.
Each day after school as well as all day Saturday and part of Sunday afternoon, we spent outdoors with the neighborhood kids or a favorite dog. We played games, we dug holes, we played with toys and we were mostly outside! If you saw a sporting event, someone put you in the car, without a car seat or seat belt, and took you with them to the event. Perhaps it was a high school football game on a Friday night, or maybe you went as a family to see the rodeo at Lawrence Stadium or the Wichita Forum. And maybe you occasionally went to Lawrence Stadium to see the Wichita Indians, a AAA farm club for the Cleveland Indians, play baseball.
Cessna and Beech Aircraft both were quickly transforming their manufacturing operations back to producing civilian aircraft. Many of us had family members who worked there or at Boeing. Boeing continued to rely on military aircraft contracts and flew the first experimental B-47 in December 1947. This was an important aircraft for Wichita as all of the 2,042, B-47 aircraft built by Boeing were built at their facility in Wichita.
What do you remember from 1948 and first grade? Do you remember your little rug at school that was rolled out each afternoon on the floor for a nap? Do you remember the name of your teacher, or how about the name of your school? Are there any fellow first graders with whom you remain in contact? What were your adventures on your trips to and from school each day? Do you remember the address of your house when you attended first grade? Send us your recollections and we will add them to ours. (ddzinn@aol.com; ftelder@wisc.edu)
Diane Rusch Zinn – We lived in Planeview from kindergarten 
through second grade at 4228 Fitzgerald Court. I attended Mac Arthur Elementary, aptly named for General Mac Arthur. I walked to school, often joined by Janice Johansen, who happened to be a friend of Barb Hammond, I found out recently. Since so many of the homes in Planeview looked alike, I always had bad dreams of getting lost en route, but I never did. My teacher was Mrs. Parsons, and all I remember about the class room was that it had the same light blue, pink, and white linoleum as I had in my room at home. Class was just a half day, and we had the little rugs for naps. The four-family unit we lived in was two stories, heated by a coal furnace, refrigerator cooled by ice from the neighborhood ice house, and with curtains, not doors, on all the closets.
Marilyn Tompkins Bellert – In 1947, my family lived in our first
house at 314 No. Minnesota, across the street from the canal and near the corner with V-shaped Third Street, which flooded in heavy rains and poured torrents of water into the canal. My mom walked me to kindergarten at Washington Elementary School a couple of times, over the Third Street canal bridge and two blocks on to school. After that, I walked by myself. Talk about a different era! My mom never knew how very frightened I was of walking on that bridge. School was always a place where I felt happy and busy. In addition to big Crayolas, paste, and scissors, I especially remember learning to read in kindergarten. Reading instruction was not part of the program; somehow, that was the year when the squiggles on the page suddenly made sense. What a thrill!
In 1948, we moved to 631 South Broadview, and I went to first through fourth grades at Thomas Jefferson Elementary. My recollection is that I walked five or six blocks to school, by myself until I got acquainted with neighbor kids, who are shown in the photo at left. I’m the second kid from the right, enjoying my 7th birthday party, August 1949. The tall girl with the braids who is next to me is Ann Curfman. Since I was already a beginning reader, I did not have to spend much time with Dick and Jane and enthusiastically read more and more kinds of books. Weekly visits to the Bookmobile were a special treat; I lugged home all the books I was allowed to checked out. In the early grades, we learned to print, then write in cursive, and to use a pen dipped into an ink bottle that sat in its hole on the desk. Buying school supplies each fall, the tools we would be using in the next grade, always seemed like the start of a grand adventure.
Editor’s Note: This is the second is a series of stories about landmark years in our lives, a bright idea developed by Fred Elder. Click on this link to see the first one – “1942: the Year Many of Us Were Born.”
Coming up – “1954: Starting Intermediate School.” We hope you will think about your experiences in what was once called junior high and send your recollections to one of us. (ftelder@wisc.edu, ddzinn@aol.com, or mbellert@niu.edu)
We would be delighted to add your memories of first grade and elementary school to the story above. Just send them along!
