Happy 60th Birthday, Bandelier Elementary!

School Partner News
by Joanie Quinn

Happy 60th Birthday, Bandelier Elementary!

This month the Nob Hill Co-op’s School Partner, Bandelier Elementary School, is celebrating its 60th Anniversary. To mark the event there will be a series of activities at the school from February 21-25. Wednesday, February 23, Bandelier will host an Alumni Tea from 2-4pm in the Teachers’ Lounge. All Banda alums are encouraged to attend. A photo essay will be up in the hallways the entire week (if you have photos you’d like to contribute please call Clara at Bandelier, 255-8744). The activities will be capped off by a “Follies: A Glimpse of Bandelier Through the Decades,” (place to be announced — call Clara at 255-8744) presented by the current students of Bandelier, with each grade taking on a decade. To celebrate Bandelier’s anniversary, we are printing the following reminiscences of Bandelier in the 40’s by Co-op member Helen Wright.

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Bandelier in the 1940s

In 1945, when my father came back from the war, my family moved into a new house on Monterey. My brother and I rejoiced that our new school was just across the street. While we were waiting for our house to be finished, we had lived in the East Mountains in a cabin and walked over a mile to a one-room school. Bandelier, on the other hand, seemed such a big and grand school, with two classrooms for each grade.

We lived at the edge of town and new houses were going up all around us. That first winter my bother and I went sledding on the mesa south of Pershing. Not long afterwards a park was put in; it was a great place for pick-up football games. A grocery store and a drug store were just down the street at the corner of Burton and Wellesley; they were valuable for all the good treats we could buy there. My favorites were square cinnamon suckers (2 cents), Butterfinger candy bars (5 cents) and ice cream sundaes (35 cents).

Our teachers taught us to love history, reading and music. In the 4th grade we studied New Mexico Native Americans; we wove tiny rugs on little handmade looms and made clay coil pots. In the 5th grade we built covered wagons and painted murals depicting the westward movement. That year we graduated from pencils to pens, but first we had to demonstrate satisfactory penmanship. Then we were allowed to bring our fountain pens and little bottles of ink to school. A couple of times a week we got out our music books and the teacher got out her pitch pipe, and we sang the traditional songs of the old world and the new.

Holidays defined the school year as the months went by. In October there was a Halloween carnival, with various games going on in the classrooms — a cake walk in one, dark haunted house complete with cooked spaghetti for brains in another, fishing over a decorated divider for small toys in still another. On one late December evening we all came to school and went into our classrooms; one by one each class left the building in a single file line singing a Christmas carol. We formed a circle around a huge bonfire and sang our carols into the cold winter night. In February either the teacher or kids (depending on the grade) made a magnificent Valentine box with red and white crepe paper ruffles and hearts. All Valentines were deposited there and passed out during the party. We brought colored hardboiled eggs at Easter time for the teacher to hide and for us to hunt.

At recess time we liked to play dodge ball. Girls played with jacks on the sidewalk at the east side of the building. Both boys and girls played softball and basketball. But there were “seasons” for other kinds of play as well. In the spring kites were everywhere. Each year a young man came to the drugstore on the corner and demonstrated fancy yo-yo tricks. He carved our names, with beautiful calli-graphy, onto the wooden Duncan yo-yos we were in a hurry to buy. Marble season found us all over the schoolyard with bags of marbles that we hoped to enlarge by winning more from other kids.