Gilpatrick, Dorothy (Dotty)

              Interview with Dorothy(Dotty) Gilpatrick
July 2001

To avoid any confusion as to the Wheat School in which I taught and the original
Wheat school that was here pre-Oak Ridge, the wheat school in which I taught was built
in December of 43' and in January 44'. It opened in February of 44'. You wonder how
they build the school in a couple of months, but it was an entirely frame building that
went up to accommodate kindergarten through 8th, with a gym, no cafeterias at that time,
an art room, a music room, an office, and a clinic. They were not anticipating the many
children that really came eventually, but I think perhaps originally it was build to
accommodate maybe two rooms per grade level.
It was an L-shaped building with a principal's office and all the central areas in
the comer of the L and grades K-3 in one wing and 4-8 on the other wing. It was located
on the comer of the turnpike and a traffic light which is now Blair Road. It was located
in the southeast comer at that intersection. It was necessary for it to be there because the
whole area south of the turnpike in that area on down to the K-25 buildings were
government trailers. The children we accommodated lived in those trailers. Existing
now under all the leaves and the trees is all the infrastruction of what was a community
with what was its grocery, its own post office. They were self sustained behind the K-25
fence. The children we had were children who came from absolutely everywhere.
My first day in the c1assfoo'lll was somewhere in the middle of February. I came
to Oak Ridge on FebruarY 14th, but I could not go into the classroom until I had had a
physical and all the necessary things that the army required before you could go to
whatever your job was. When I got there several days after coming to Oak Ridge, I was
given a classroom, and that is an absolutely, literal translation of what I had. I had four
walls, one blackboard on a wall, and 42 6-year olds. No furniture, no books, nothing.
So, you did what you could to be creative. I did a lot with music in those days and we
played lots of games. We did a lot of singing. We did folk games. We did everything a
young teacher could think of to keep all those children amused and interested. They did
go home for lunch, which gave a break in the middle of the day, and then they were back
at 1:00 o'clock and stayed until 2:30, I think.
The first construction workers who came into K-2S, of course, were the people
who did the site preparation. That is a craft all by itself. When the site preparation was
finished, then the people came in who were masons. They laid the concrete blocks and
poured the concrete. When that craft was over, the next kind of craftsman's came in and
so on through the electricians, plumbers, and all the different crafts. As they finished,
they and their families and their children left. New ones moved in on the weekends. On
some Monday mornings we would have as many as 100 new children to enroll. I think
the saddest thing about it concerned the people who taught 6th
, 7th
, and 8th grades. They
found it almost impossible to motivate these children because they had not done anything
most of their young lives but move. So they were not too interested in going to school
and being here 3 months and going on 2 months to someplace else. It was entirely
different with the young children because they were excited to come to school. It was
much easier to motivate them.
So how long did we live without anything in our classrooms? Well, we never
knew. One day you might get a few chairs, another day you might get some tables, and
another day you would get a few boxes of books, and another week you would get some
more chairs. Nothing matched and nothing went together. Remember it was wartime
and you could not purchase things. As I understood it, there was a call that went out to
the nation: Any school system that had surplus materials, please send them to Oak
Ridge, Tennessee. So, we got textbooks from various places and in all kinds of
conditions, but it was an interesting sort of thing. You made do with what you had. By
the time the days passed from February until June I had a reasonably equipped classroom.
Things came in pretty rapidly.
One of the special things about my classroom was that they always had the first
grade down on the end of the hall. You start with first and go to second, third, and
fourth. Kindergarten was in the center part of the building, so I was always at the end of
the hall. During the weekend, they might add a couple rooms on the end. So, you would
come in the next morning and be moved. But, everyone moved because you had to keep
things in rotation. We would move, then you would settle,down that day and you might
be there a couple weeks. And they would add on. And if I was not moving, they were
building next door to me. So, I always had carpenters down on the end of the building
hammering or doing something. But as everything else in those days, it went very
quickly. They would put two new rooms on this end and put two on the other end. They
were up overnight almost. It was a building meant not to survive and, of course, it did
not. That building lasted the rest of that school year and all of the next school year.
When K-25 was finished as far as construction was concerned, it was closed.
Fairview School also served trailer children, because all of the central part of
town south of the turnpike at that time was filled with trailers. And so those were trailer
children. Their father's were also craft people. Fairview opened about a year after
Wheat did. By that time the schools had more equipment. That school was built in the
same pattern, and built not to last also. Of course it was only in existence for a couple of
years, and then it closed.
ANY QUESTIONS?
-Were there other schools?
Other schools that opened were Elm Groove, Pine Valley, and Cedar Hill and
Robertsville. They opened in the fall of 43'. The High School opened in the fall of 43 '.
The gym at Robertsville now is part of on existing school. The High School was up on
top of Kentucky Avenue near Blankenship Field. The five schools were in the main part
of town, the Wheat school on the west end, and Fairview went up a little later. There was
an original Scarborogh school. It was out on Bethel Valley Road. The Building is now a
government building, and it was an original pre-Oak Ridge.
-How were you and the other teachers recruited?
That is interesting. I guess I can just recall and tell you my own experience. Dr.
Blankenship, as you know, was almost commandeered by the army. He was told to set
up the best school system he could dream of Money was no object. It was to be of such
superb quality that the finest scientists would want their children to be there. So, at that
point he began looking for teachers. Most of the teachers that came were single. A few
were married and, if that were the case they were here because their husbands were
working here. 1 don't know of any married teacher that was recruited to come.
My personal experience was that 1 had a friend who heard they were looking for
teachers. 1 was teaching school in Corbin, Kentucky. On Friday, 1 was told, "Mrs.
Lloyd, 1 am certainly sorry to give you up." 1 said, "I beg your pardon?" My principal
replied, "I had a call from Dr. Blankenship from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He interviewed
me over the phone and 1 think you have a job." 1 got home from work that afternoon, and
there was a telegram from Dr. Blankenship. It said: Dear Miss Lloyd, "Please report for
work on Wednesday morning, a.m." Most of the people who were asked to come,
received just such a short of notice. 1 was pretty independent because 1 replied by
telegram that said 1 couldn't be there Wednesday. I said I would be there on next
Monday. That was the way I was recruited. He was combing the school systems
everywhere. 1 guess we were never real sure what his criteria was, except we had to be
certified. We understood that being young was a big advantage. We understood he was
looking for people who were creative, ingenious, and willing to take some risk. The
original teachers that came to Oak Ridge were absolutely from everywhere.
-What was the incentive for you to come here?
The incentive was salary.
-Where and how did you learn about it?
You see Corbin, Kentucky is only 90 miles from here. Word was everywhere, at least
within a 100 miles radiance, that something big was happening here and no one knew
what. It was considered a construction site. No one knew what was being built. Salary
was $210.00 per month for 10 months. That summer of"44, I worked for the recreation
department and I made $200.00 a month. That was big money for a teacher in those
days. My room in the dormitory was $15.00 a month. My incentive was also a change.
The salary was big inducement. That is what brought most people. What else could
induce you to come?
-I was thinking about the lack of aesthetics. I would like you to comment about getting
into the gate.
I guess I was completely overwhelmed. It was like an army camp, and of course I had
never been in such a situation like that before. I was a little intimidated at all the red tape
you have to go through. This is purely a personal matter. We had to have a physical.
Here I was in the hospital, lying on an examining table, stark naked with a sheet over me.
We had real sheets in those days, not paper. In comes this handsome doctor, and he was
in uniform, no white coat on. I had a very peculiar feeling. He was an ordinary man. He
was Dr. Reagan. That was a little intimidating. It was an adventure. I moved into a
dormitory in West Village. In those days, they were numbered. It was WVS. Then it
became Donora Hall. I moved in while it was still under construction. I was in the
shower one morning. A man walked in and said, "Stay where you are lady, I have a little
job to do." So, I stayed where I was and in a minute he said, "You can come out now. I
am leaving." So, it was that kind of a life. My father was very wise. He said, "I do not
know what is going on down there, but it is a construction job. You are going to meet
men like you have never met before. Be careful." And he was so right.
Many of the people that worked at the menial jobs were the low social economic
level. The language and the experiences we heard and learned were completely foreign
to most of us that came from a cultured background. Immediately, at the very earliest,
cultural things began to develop. On Sunday afternoon, life could be just what you
wanted it to be. Everything was wide open all the time. You could not go anywhere
because we did not have cars. We made our own recreation. There were a lot of people
that thought home visits were necessary. We did not make home visits, per se. It was
just not socially acceptable. Police and FBI informers were everywhere. They were
people like we were, who had been recruited to work in that spot. They kept their regular
job, but they were under orders to report anything they had seen. You might be teaching
school next door to someone who was reporting.
Dr. Blankenship was recruited from Columbia University. It was the leading
educational school in the country at the time. So the army went to where they considered
they w.ould get the best person. And the reason he was loved is because he said we are
going to make the best school system we ever heard of. You are going to do it. We had
blank checks. In those days, we had workshops on Saturday, one Saturday morning per
month. So, that morning you spent with your grade level, and two hours of that morning
you spent two hours with at an intersect level. People came from different backgrounds
educationally and geographically. When you get together with 30-40 1 st grade teachers,
you have all these stimulating notions, and then you have to filter all of this and decide
what you were going to do. It was amazing what a meeting of the minds there would be.
I can really never remember a time where we strongly disagreed. You would say that is a
good idea, or I like what you are saying, but there was always a consensus. One example
of a result of collected ideas was a compilation of short poems for young children. They
were all things we had gathered from other places. They weren't originals, but we put
them all in one book so a teacher had all these nice little poems on her desk if she wanted
to use them. We did the same things with songs. Again all these things were in print and
we had permission to reprint them. I have recently given my poem book to a
Willowbrook Kindergarten teacher. She looked at it and said, "This is great, and they are
all right here." That type of thing came out of the Saturday workshops.
The most important thing for a 1st grader to accomplish is reading, writing, and
numbers. Dr. Blankenship would look over what you had done and say that is great, but
how about this? He would never say I don't like that, let's start over again. He said to
his principals, your teachers are your crowning jewels, so tum them loose. And they did.
I do have to say we did not have as many problem children as we have in school now.
The teaching was easier. The children who had special needs did not go to school. That
made a big difference. The children that went to Pine Valley, Cedar Hill, and Elm Grove
were children with professional parents. I think back on those children I had at Cedar
Hill. I had Dr. Pollard's children, and others of well known parents. Some farm families
left in the area had not been removed. Their children came to us and they were
Appalachia. That came into the mix too. Somewhere in the area of Oklahoma Ave. and
the Turnpike, there was a farmhouse and they had a bunch of kids. Those children came
to school in their overalls and bare footed. They were pathetic.
Late in my career I said if you want to close a school, send Dottie Gilpatrick
there. I was at Wheat, Fair View, Highland View, Cedar Hill, Pine Valley, and
Glenwood. All ofthese schools are closed. I opened Woodland. I went there when it
was brand spanking new. It was stimulating and so exciting.
-Tell us about where you are working in the preschool.
That is a new chapter in my life. I resigned from the Oak Ridge School in 1955, because
I was pregnant. I had been married for nine years and had given up on a family. We
suddenly discovered I was pregnant much to our delight I immediately I quit in June of
1955. I was at Woodland still. I thought I would never go back to teaching. Then in
early 1965, Sarah Ketron came to me and said the Oak Ridge Schools are launching a
new program as an experiment. We have gotten federal money to try a program for
preschoolers. She said, "Would you be interested?" The first test case was built in
Scarboro Community. I thought about it I was working as the director of Christian
education at the time. Sarah Ketron is very persuasive and I talked to the superintendent
of schools. So once again, I launched into something new. It was an unknown territory.
It had 40 children. We operated it like the Kindergarten did at that time, which is half
day. I had 20 something kids in the morning and 20 something kids in the afternoon, and
no help. It has improved a thousand percent. It was indescribable the condition some of
those children lived in in 1965. Well, they were more than infantile level, one-year-old
level when they were four years old. Many of them were this way. So you take them
where they were, which every good teacher does. You take them where they are and you
have a goal out there. You try to get them from point A to point B. You devise your own
methods to get there because I had nothing to go on.
-Was that because of their environment that they were growing up in or were they
genetically disabled?
No, many of these children advanced as far as testing was concerned as much as three
years. So, it was not lack of ability. It was deprivation in their background. Many of
these children came from homes in which the only thing they had heard was "Shut up",
"Be quiet", "No". They only heard negative commands. Many of them had never sat
down at a table to eat. They did not know how to sit in a chair or use utensils. They were
eating with their fingers. They came almost from an impoverished background, which is
hard to say but it is what I encountered. So, you started with such elementary things as to
how to pull a chair up to a table, sit at the table, how to drink your milk without spilling
it, how to use a fork or a spoon, and what to do when you finish eating. A napkin was
unheard of for many of these children. I tried to expose these children to as many things
as I could that was outside their world. You remember Davis Brothers Cafeteria? Near
the end of the year that first year, I went to Davis Brothers and I told them I would like to
bring my class down in 2:30 in the afternoon and have the children eat dessert. I had to
make special arrangements for this. I had to elicit mothers to go with me, and I tried to
bring the concept, even though these children did not have much, something would be
required of them, so they were to bring a quarter. I wrote letters to the mothers. We
transported these children to the cafeteria and not a single one of them had ever been any
place like that. I had arranged that they have Jell-O, ice cream, or cookies. There were
not a lot of choices, but yet the children went through the line and picked something.
They paid their quarters. Remember the cafeteria had cloth napkins? Well, we had
learned how to use paper napkins, but a cloth napkin was larger. One of the little boys, a
bright little boy, when he finished eating he folded his napkin up carefully and put it in
his pocket. Taking things was a problem. So I said, "What are you going to do with your
napkin?" He said, "I am going to take it home to my mother. It is so pretty." Then I
explained it had to stay there. I said, "It is dirty, you have to leave it here." He looked
back toward the back and said, "They got a washing machine back there?" He knew it
was dirty, so it should have been washed. That was an end of the year treat for the
children.
In regard of integration, it was the spring of 67' when the schools were going to
be integrated. That whole school year there was much tension and much excitement of a
negative kind. It permeated the whole community. The parents were unhappy and
insecure, and the children were repeating what they heard at home. I felt tension in the
community, and it reflected in the children. This little boy said to me late in the year, "I
ain't going to no Goddamn white school and I ain't going to have no Goddamn white
teacher." 1 said, "That is very interesting because I am white." He looked up at me with
his big black eyes and said, "Oh, you don't count." I think that is just how life should be:
we should not count.