Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

school the following January at Horace Mann, and I remember the first kid I met was a
boy by the name of Perry Edsell. And I knew him all of my life. He went to - of course
he went to public schools, and when I left I went through the parochial school system. Rut
we both went to work at Shell. And Perry might have been a chemist. I'm not quite sure
if he could have gone to Shurtleff College and studied chemistry at night school, hut he
worked in an experimental laboratory, and they picked four fellows to go to work in Texas
in 1931 for Shell for about three months, and Edsell and T were two of them.
SESSION 1, TAPE 1, SIDE 2
A: I recall that. And I knew his family, I guess some of his children are still alive. I never
see them. I wouldn't know them if I saw them. But we went to work in Texas, 1 recall
that.
Q: Horace Mann, what about the teachers there? Do you recall any particular teachers
from that time?
A: Why yes I recall a teacher. I think that a Mr. Lowery was the principal. Rut my classroom
teacher at that time, I'm sure, was a Mrs. Sawyer. And she had a family up in Upper
Alton and her son-in-law, later on, worked at Shell. You'd have classroom discussions, even
then you know, when you were children. I remember Mr. Lowery well. He was supposed
to be a mean man, but he never was mean to me. (chuckles)
Q: Well!
A: And of course that's kids checking out their principal you know. You don't know that
he's mean or not. But my memory of Horace Mann isn't too great. Oh I remember there
was a girl of the Everline family and she was a, I guess, a class sweetheart, she always
got a lot of valentines from the boys in her class. Course now it was either the first, second,
third, or fourth grade, so you can imagine how old we were. But she died.
Q: Oh?
A: Real young. And I can remember as a class we went to her wake. I remember that
- that was a - of course that was an unusual thing. I don't know, I believe that family
might be all gone from Upper Alton. Whether that house still stands or not, this probably
was in the center of the business district at that - of the now business district at that
time. It was in the center of the business district.
Q: Do you remember anything about the courses thew at the Horace Mann, the courses that
you took?
A: Oh I guess the basic courses were reading, writing and arithmetic, and geography and
history. I always liked history, and I liked geography. And I was a very average
student. I never flunked, but I wasn't a valedictorian or the class president or the class
head or anything like that, but . . .
Q: Was Horace Mann a public school?
A: Yes. It still stands up at - oh, at Clausen and Seminary. Well it was the chief -
it was the big public school in the Alton school district, the upper Alton people, ~vcrybody
went there. I don't recall whether it was integrated or not. They had another school up
at the end of Washington Avenue which was the jumping off part before the annexation
and what they called Whittier Township maybe or Godfrey Township. There was a Negro
school up there, but I think white students went to that. We could have - I don't remember