I went to a reunion last weekend
of students who had attended the Darlington Heights School in
Darlington Heights, Va., from 1927-59. My wife (she’s in the middle of
the front row with the plaid dress in the first photo) was one of those
students. When she attended, in 1955, there were three teachers
teaching six grades. Somehow those kids became pretty productive and
accomplished citizens (my wife graduated Phi Beta Kappa, so her
teacher, Mrs. Womack ? that’s her on the left in picture 23 ? must have
done something right).
As centerpieces for the tables the
organizers had used old textbooks and reading materials from several
decades of the school’s life. These were texts that some high schoolers
would have trouble with today, and they were designed back then for
elementary school students.
Darlington Heights School has a Triangle connection, by the
way. One of its early principals was a man named Clarence Bradshaw, who
later became the editorial page editor of the Durham Morning Herald.
Mr. Bradshaw was killed in the mid-1970s by a single shot from a gun
that was fired through the window at which he was standing while doing
dishes in his kitchen. That crime has never been solved.
