A Valentine Box

Today Sophie and her mother are busy making a Valentine Box, a place for her school friends to put the Valentine cards they bring to school for her. Mother and daughter are having a great time.

Seeing the Valentine cards made me think of some cards I found in my uncle Carl Butler's box. I wrote about the box in 2009. Carl died in the Pacific during World War II.  He and his only brother both served in the U.S. Army Air Corps based out of New Guinea.

He was the oldest child in my mother's large brood of siblings. In many ways, everyone in the family idealized him. I was named for him.  But I really don't know much about him, other than what I have been told or found in that box.

A man of the depression, he managed to attend Simmons College (now Hardin-Simmons University) in Abilene, Texas, and through many trials (most likely financial, given the times) graduated from North Texas State Teachers College (now The University of North Texas) in about 1937. This led him into a short career of teaching in small rural schools in Texas. The "box" included some letters of job offers with annual salaries of $90. He later left teaching to join the Texas Highway Patrol for a salary of about $100 per year.

This brings me to the Valentine cards. The "box" contained about 1/2 dozen cards from Carl's days of teaching. The cards and messages are simple and illustrate a regard of students for a teacher. Maybe they were reciprocal, we just don't know. Uncle Carl taught in small schools at Olney, Dunn and Balmorhea, Texas. He likely taught, at least some of the time, in a multi-level environment or a one-room school. The school at Dunn has been closed for more than half a century.

In the pre-war (1937-1941), depression years, a little card must have been difficult to come by for some students.  Some of the student names on the cards are of Spanish origin, perhaps, indicating that they were from his last school in Balmorhea in far western Texas where more Hispanic students would have lived at that time.

A simple Valentine wish that survives for so many years after a teacher and probably the student are long gone registers in one's heart.

So maybe, making a Valentine box and the cards that are dropped into will make life-long impressions for another generation.

Note: Yes, it has really been over three years since I last posted on this blog. Maybe I will do a few more in coming days.