Longtime teacher has ‘mothered’ hundreds
SALEM – Although she never had a child of her own, Miss Emma Hunter Maxwell has “mothered” hundreds of elementary school children.
And at 94, the retired Salem teacher remembers just about every one of them.
She showed that when three of her third-grade students got together for a small luncheon in her honor in April. It was given by one of the students she had fin first and third grade, Lewis Barker, his wife Christine and Barker’s parents George and Betsy Barker at their home on Broad Street.
Miss Emma Hunter Maxwell gets together with some of her former Academy Street School third graders, Scott Baker, left, Lewis Barker and Amy Holliday, now Amy Ferris. They are holding class pictures from their first and third grades with Miss Maxwell. Photo by Meg Hibbert
The special occasion was Baker’s visit back to the area from his home in Tallmadge, Ohio, to officiate at the wedding of his uncle’s son in Roanoke. Baker is now the Rev. Scott Baker, pastor of Northwest Avenue Church of Christ.
One of Baker and Barker’s classmates, Amy Holliday Ferris who now lives in Roanoke, was at the get-together too, to talk about those favorite days at Academy Street School. She wasn’t in that first-grade class, but was in Miss Maxwell’s third grade with Baker and Barker.
“Miss Maxwell was one of the most important people that set me on the right path,” Barker explained.
“She taught us what we should do.” And he remembered “Miss Maxwell said she was going to marry me. I bet her $5 that I wouldn’t ever get married.”
The teacher who looks far younger than her years remembered the first time she saw Barker, well before he was in her class.
Miss Emma Hunter Maxwell's third-grade class at Academy Street School in 1972 included Lewis Barker, second from right in first row; Amy Ferris, fourth from right, and Scott Baker, at left in third row.
“He was crawling around on the floor of the Green Market, looking for pennies,” she recalled, referring to the grocery store that used to be on Main Street in downtown Salem.
Barker and Baker lived across the street from each other on North Broad Street, and walked to school together for years.
“When we would see that black smoke” from the chimney that still stands at what today is Academy Street Condominiums, “we knew it would be good and warm,” Barker remembered. The old school had a coal-fired furnace.
“Lewis and my desks butted right up against Miss Maxwell’s desk,” Baker said. Was that so she could keep an eye on them, she was asked? ”No, I didn’t have to. That was because your mothers raised you well,” she stated.
Miss Maxwell didn’t recall punishing either Barker or Baker when they were in her classes.
“If I was fussing at anybody, Lewis would get in there and try to explain,” she said. “Lewis had a heart as big as all outdoors.”
Things were different then in public schools. Teachers could paddle students for acting up, and Christmas was celebrated as Christmas in school, not as “winter holiday.”
Miss Maxwell remembered a student’s mother calling and asking if she would paddle her son for talking back to the school librarian when he was in third grade. “I don’t paddle children,” Miss Maxwell said she told the mother.
The woman insisted, though. “And on the second hit, the boy started crying,” Miss Maxwell said, adding that he never acted up again that she remembered.
Each December, Miss Maxwell would recite the Christmas story from the Baker said.
“I would dress up the children as Mary and Joseph and the Wise Men. That was easy. They wore towels on their heads,” she said.
“Every day in December we did that,” Baker said, and those children learned the story of Jesus’ birth in school.
Miss Maxwell also knitted caps for each of the boys and girls in her class as her Christmas gift to them. “I still have mine,” Amy Holliday Ferris said proudly.
“Well, bless your little heart,” Miss Maxwell responded.
Ferris recalled when her class had recess, “We would either play down here behind Broad Street School,” now Salem City Hall, “or we would run at Roanoke College.”
Baker and Barker were only two of 28 school-age kids in the neighborhood, neighbor Betty Boothe remembered. “We have a picture of them all lined up in front of the Greshams’ driveway, waiting for the school bus.”
In their younger days, children who lived on one side of Broad Street were never allowed to cross the street alone until they were 8 years old, neighbor Barbara Gresham said.
Baker remembered neighborhood kids playing kick the can and “Ghost in the Graveyard,” which, he said, is similar to hide-and-seek.
Miss Maxwell and the Broad Street neighbors gathered at the Barkers’ house that day talked about other Salem landmarks long gone, and favorite places downtown and in downtown Roanoke.
“We would collect drink bottles and take them to Green Market and get about $1, and we thought we were rich,” Baker added, recalling that their earnings that were enough for both him and Lewis to buy candy and drinks.
“Tarpley’s Cafeteria had the best coconut cream pie,” High Street resident Mary Whitmire said. “And Miller and Rhodes Tea Room in Roanoke had the best peppermint ice cream,” Miss Maxwell added. “They put chocolate sauce all over it.”
During her 27 years of teaching, Miss Maxwell also taught at G. W. Carver, and the first year, at Fort Lewis Elementary. “I had 42 students in one room at the beginning of school, in fourth grade,” she said. Most of the time during her teaching career she had 24 to 28 students in her classes.
“I loved Academy Street. It was such a nice school,” said Miss Maxwell, pointing out her mother and sister, Mary Jane Maxwell who later taught at Andrew Lewis High School, had also been students at the same school.
Before leaving, Amy Ferris presented her teacher with a small gift. It was an apple for her teacher. “This child, I remember her well,” Miss Maxwell said.
Even today, she enjoys little children. She left the luncheon to go back to the family home near Lewis-Gale Medical Center where she and her niece baby sit her great-niece’s toddlers.
I too had dear Miss Maxwell- 1957, first grade, at Academy Street School. After all these years it’s great to know that she’s still with us! (And she looks as young as ever!!)
Tina S. Mason
Charlotte, NC
hi tina,
tell bill hi!
S.H. Heironimus