Vinnie Rhodes Peters.

At the Dimock vocational high school, in Dimock, Pennsylvania, during fifth grade, we had a lovely petite lady who was a very good teacher. She was loved by almost all of the students there. She had taught school as a single woman, unmarried, and then during the 1942 summer vacation, she was married to a good man. She became Mrs. Peters.

My parents had moved from Larksville/Plymouth in April of 1942. We moved to a farm in Springville Township. Up the dirt road from our house, were a family of three girls, and the older one would tell me about Vinnie Rhodes, who taught fifth and sixth grades. I was looking forward to having her as my teacher. When school started after summer, there she was, Mrs. Peters, in my new fifth grade classroom.

She was very nice, taught us well, and she and I got along smoothly. I learned a great deal from her about life and getting along with people, and much more. We students usually obeyed her directions and suggestions.

One day, we were supposed to be getting ready for the next class. We each had a seat with a flat desk area in front of us, and a drawer under our seat. The drawer opened at the right side, and was pulled out into the aisle. We kept all of our books, pencils, crayons and tablets in there. We pulled our drawers open, and everyone got their book and put it on their desk.

‘For some reason’, there was a comic book in my drawer and it lay on top of my things, opened to one of the stories in it. I may have been looking at it at recess, and I had not closed it and put it out of sight.

Instead of getting the book needed for the class, I began to look at the comic book without touching it. Mrs. Peters saw my intense concentration and came around to my aisle. She stopped right there less than a foot away, seeing my drawer pulled out with the open comic book exposed. I don’t think she said much, but I remember being mortified that she expected me to be ready for class  -  and there I was, reading an open comic book instead.

She had caught me being disobedient, and I felt that I had hurt her feelings by sneaking to read the comic book in such an untrustworthy way. I know that she had trusted me, and I felt very guilty to have done such a deed. I am ashamed that I could do such a thing to her, sweet Mrs. Peters. The memory has never left me.

We did keep in touch through the years, and I stopped at her home in Dimock on my way to my husband’s parents’ home with my growing children. Sometimes I was by myself, and we had nice visits. Her husband had died by that time, and they had had no children. She was one of the very best of my teachers throughout my school life. 

I'll see you at the Corner Post...