BY ERICA MANIEZ
In 1917 Mary Colton Lucas moved to Issaquah to teach school. Her brother, William Lucas, was part-owner and superintendent of a local logging camp. His friend, Leo Gleason, was a member of the school board. Mary’s memories of her time in Issaquah were recorded in 1973 and were recently transcribed.
“So, the long-awaited day arrived. The two little Gleason boys and I walked a mile through the woods to the little unpainted school. Opening the door, I was greeted by that old schoolroom odor. There were the various-sized desks, grubby and carved with the initials of long-vanished pupils.
“It was strangely quiet until the door burst open and in pushed a half-dozen children of different sizes and types, all rather poorly clad but healthy-looking. They scrambled for the seats they each thought best, and settled down to stare at me.
“Now, the mothers of the beginners were coming in, and I was busy greeting them and trying to look delighted. How could I find time to break six tiny humans into the mysteries of the four Rs when there sat 10 larger ones scattered over the other seven grades?
“The school work proved to be as difficult as I had surmised. It seemed impossible to give each child the attention he needed.
“There was not much diversion for a young girl. One Saturday evening, Leona Neukirchen, the daughter of the mill owner, came out with two high school boys in a Model T Ford to take me along to the Grizzly Bear dancehall. But we never made it. The little car broke down. A logger with a kind heart finally stopped, and drove us all to our homes. That was my only social event of the year!
“Spring arrived, but there was something wrong. Sometimes I would come on a little group of girls who immediately stopped talking and scampered off. Or, when I lifted the telephone at my boarding place, I would hear reference to a ‘she’ who wasn’t any better than she should be.
“I wondered why I had ever wanted to teach school.
“As I was dismissing the pupils one day, a little third-grader looked up at me and asked, ‘Are you going to stay to the meeting, too, Teacher?’
“This looked like something I should be in on, and must have a connection with this secretive business, so I stuck around. As the people straggled in, I looked up and offered a ‘Good afternoon.” But most of them evaded my eyes.
Mrs. Stidl, a very matronly and unattractive woman with stringy gray hair, kept looking at a paper in her hand, and talking behind her hand to a younger, dark-haired woman who still showed signs of former beauty. There were a few men in the crowd, mostly farmers, I noticed.
“Then, in walked Leo Gleason. He smiled at me and faced the room. ’So, you’ve got up a petition to fire Miss Colton, Mrs. Stidl? Just what has she done to make you do that?’
“‘Going into Seattle, running around with soldiers and not getting back here till noon the next day.’
“And the other one cut in, ‘And chasing around to dances with that wild Neukirchen girl. She ain’t teaching these kids nothing neither.’
“‘Just a minute!’ yelled Mr. Gleason. ‘You two are the last people to be making such statements about any girl. There’s been plenty of talk around about how wild you both were when you were young.’ He turned to the chagrined group and waved the petition in the air.
“‘Anyone want to sign this?’ Nobody did. They all left.
“Mr. Gleason turned to me. ‘The old vultures, they really aren’t mad at you. It’s your brother they’re trying to get even with. You see, he fired their husbands because they were absent from camp every time someone needed them at home. With this war rush, he had to have men he could count on and those old devils just took it out on you.’”
Even the promise of a $5 per month pay raise could not induce Mary Colton to return to teach in Issaquah the next year.
Erica Maniez is museum director of the Issaquah History Museums. To learn more about the museums’ work, go to www.issaquahhistory.org.
