Myrtle Graduated 100 Years Ago
I was wanting to post something about Grandma today. It was her turn, and I didn’t want to go way back in the past to some great great ancestor or something. I started looking at my Phenice related photos on my computer. I saw this photo, which I really love. It’s such a wonderful photo of her, but I had used it before. I went back and checked on how long it had been. It’s been nine years ago that I shared it. It was then that I noticed that it had been one hundred years since she graduated from high school. How could I pass up a post about a 100-year celebration?! It’s a centennial!
Myrtle Sylvia Phenice graduated from high school in Jennings, Louisiana, on May 29, 1925.
I also can share the enhanced version of the photo. Isn’t it great? It’s so formal and serious. Myrtle Sylvia Phenice was a vision in white. I’ve always thought that she looked like she could have had Native American blood in her. The DNA of her children does not show any. Maybe it’s just the dark hair and strong cheekbones. She was a striking young woman.
Myrtle was born on December 19, 1906, in Hathaway, Louisiana, to Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Martha Keys Phenice. “She was always a rather bashful child and continue(d) to be a rather bashful adult.” Harry or H.C. was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, to a family that had been in Pennsylvania for several generations. Daisy was born in the London borough of Hackney, and her family was all English. Somehow H.C. and Daisy got together, married, and started a family in Louisiana.
Myrtle was the third of seven children. She had an older sister, a younger sister, and five brothers. She was close to all of them, so I knew them. Most of them lived in or near Jefferson Davis Parish when I grew up there. Sometimes I would see them at her house, and other times I’d see them at family get togethers or reunions. My fondest memories of them are when her sisters were at her house and they would just laugh and laugh.
Myrtle’s school career was varied. It started in a one-room school called St. Elmo, which was four miles northeast of their home in Elton. This is where she learned to love reading and spelling. She went to schools in the China, Raymond, and Hathaway area. All of those places are in the northern part of Jeff Davis Parish. She also had a year in Kinder, which is in the neighboring Allen Parish. She even had her older sister Grace as a teacher one year. Besides reading and spelling, Myrtle had an interest in music and basketball.
In the third grade she won first place in a singing contest sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She also learned how to play piano from her mother. Later, at the age of fourteen, she took piano lessons from a Mrs. Gray. She received what she called invaluable practice from Mr. and Mrs. Gray for singing and playing piano. Her basketball skills were coached by Dr. L. E. Shirley when she was in eighth and ninth grades. My grandmother reported that they had strong teams both years and that she “played basketball with a vengeance.” I was a witness to one of the last times she played basketball. It was at our family Christmas get together in 1977 at our home in Jennings. I call it Basketball Spectaculare and it was thoroughly entertaining. If you were there, you know what I’m talking about.
She graduated from high school in Jennings, Louisiana, on May 29, 1925. I didn’t write about it in May, but it’s not too late now. It was probably 100 years ago at this time of the year that she started her college career at Southwest Louisiana Institute in Lafayette. She got a teaching certificate from SLI after two years. It was good for life. Even after SLI changed its name to USL and later to ULL.
Some of you may have wondered how I remembered all of this information about my grandmother. I didn’t. My grandmother wrote a small blurb about herself and her family for her cousin Edith Keys Segraves. Cousin Edith was a family historian who put together an invaluable book about their Keys-Cook family. I’m so glad Grandma cooperated with her and gave her some family info. I’m sure it’s all true. If she said she was a bashful adult, she must have been. I will not doubt her, even though my mother did scoff at that proclamation when she read it! Some people’s children!