DANNWALLIS.COM

A Tribute to the Lady with the Blue Hair and the Sensible Shoes
(The person who most changed my life!)

By: H. Dann Wallis

Frequently in the journey through life the path we are on will challenge us with
a fork that veers sharply off to the right or left….a sudden and forced choice of
alternatives appearing when none was called for or wanted. Fortunately, not
all of these decision points are true life-altering choices….but then again,
some of them actually are. Often those life-altering decisions may not even be
recognized as such until much further along in our life’s journey. Then, with the
event so sharp in our memory, we look back at that fork-in-the-road and
exclaim, WOW! How did I ever get that one right? When those truly heavy
choices are thrust upon us, it can be lifesaving to have someone who loves us
and whose judgments for our life we trust to help show the way. Parents are
often good choices for this, although most often we don’t properly value their
judgment calls for us until much later in life when somehow, if by overnight
magic, they became so much smarter. Our children can often be great
advisors, providing we can just get past remembering them as teenagers…but
for direction on matters of contemporary life, they are certainly more with-it. If
you can’t turn to someone you love and trust, how about following the advice of
someone who scares the hell out of you and whose power over your life at that
moment, you definitely have reason to fear?

Such a major, life-changing fork-in-the-road came rushing at me near the end
of my freshman year at Fort Madison High School. If it wasn’t so major, why
then can I look back on that exact moment, now 55 years later, and remember
even the smallest detail? The person standing squarely in my path directing
traffic at that moment was Miss Genevieve Berry, with the dual role as head of
the FMHS Mathematics Department and the Assistant Principal; and she did
scare the hell out of me. But not just me! I don’t remember anyone in the
group of students I hung-out with who deliberately set out to incur Miss Berry’s
wrath…at anytime…for any reason. Whenever we encountered her in the hall,
we fell silent and quickened our step while looking down to avoid eye contact
and we would alter our course straight for our next class. It was not because
of her imposing stature; she was probably but five foot three inches tall, even
in her ‘sensible shoes’. She stood and she walked ramrod straight with the
posture of an Embassy Guard, which seemed to make her 110 pounds even
more menacing. As a high school freshman male, I was not gifted at guessing
ages…especially the ages of older women of whom you are justifiably fearful.
But that said, Miss Berry was probably in her early 50’s.
(After publication of this article, I learned that Miss Berry was born in North
English, Iowa, in December, 1899. She died in that same town in 1991. Thus,
she would have been 45 at the time of this life-changing event…see, I said I
couldn’t guess women’s ages.)

Our fear of her came not from an imposing physical presence, but from the
absolute power she could exercise over each of us; over our qualifications to
play sports, or to even graduate on time. She almost never smiled, at least not
at the boys, and behind her gold, wire framed glasses, she seemed seldom to
need to blink….translation; she offered little warmth and she never missed a
thing!

The things you would most certainly remember following a first meeting with
Miss Berry was the blue tint in her near-white hair, which was always pulled
taut into a bun at the nape of her neck; the steel-gray eyes that saw everything
not only ahead but also behind; and then there was the brooch. My great-aunt
put blue tint in her white hair, though I never quite understood why, so that
wasn’t unique for me. But, it was impossible to ignore the broach, because
she wore it each and every day; sometimes to close the high-neck of a stiffly
starched white blouse, sometimes on the lapel of her suit jacket, and
sometimes suspended from a small silver chain around her neck. But it was
always present someplace on her person. You just knew it was very important
to her and the closest thing she ever offered-up as a smile would occur when
you complimented her on it…even if you had done so a few days before. The
rumor among the high school girls was that the broach had been a last gift
from her lover who was killed in France in the First World War. It was an
exciting explanation, so we all bought into it. Yet, somehow even today the
words ‘lover’ and ‘Miss Berry’ still do not seem to fit naturally in the same
sentence.

So, this was the menace that awaited me when I was summoned to the
Principal’s Office during my sixth period study hall, just a few weeks before my
freshman year was to end. Miss Berry kept me waiting for some time in the
outer office and by the time I was finally summoned to enter her inter sanctum,
I had imagined myself guilty of enough infractions to spend the entire up-
coming summer working off the demerits she would assign. As was
expected, I stood more-or-less at attention before her desk…Miss Berry did
not like the boys to slouch! I looked down at her and as she began to speak
the movement of the broach, today at her throat, took on a somewhat hypnotic
quality. It moved in time with her speech pattern, and reflected and magnified
the dim light of the office, I could not will my eyes to look away. She paused,
the broach stopped, the spell broke and just in time for me to hear her say,
“Mr. Wallis, I notice you have not registered to begin my mathematics
sequence in your sophomore year”. Now her math sequence involved
completing four additional years of math in the remaining three years of high
school; plane geometry, algebra II, solid geometry and trigonometry. What
was even more of a career-breaker; having declared, that became your
required major for graduation and you had to successfully complete ‘THE
SEQUENCE’ to graduate. I was no longer focused on the broach!

“No ma’am! I had great difficulty just understanding freshman algebra. I know
I am not smart enough to pass, ‘THE SEQUENCE’…even the name sounded
ominous and career limiting.

“Mr. Wallis, no one understands Freshman algebra. There are two things you
need to hear and to understand before you are allowed to get any older. First,
every now and then all people, but especially high school Freshman, need to
attempt things they can not even dream are possible for them to achieve…this
may just be that time for you. In addition Mr. Wallis, mathematics is so
important for your future that I am prepared to make you an offer; you register,
come into my classes prepared to apply yourself and then do so…then
whatever it takes, I will not let you fail.” What had I just heard, Miss Berry was
making me a ‘no-fail’ offer for “THE SEQUENCE’?

I don’t recall that I ever actually agreed to this bargain. I just remember signing
my name on the 3 by 5 registration card she had pushed across her desk…the
one with all the blank spaces already conveniently filled-in for me by Miss
Berry. That entire meeting took maybe ten minutes, including the time I was
hypnotized by the movement of the broach…and the balance of my life would
be forever changed.

Both Miss Berry the teacher, and me the student, worked hard during those
next three years, each in keeping with our end of the bargain. By the time we
reached algebra II in ‘THE SEQUENCE’, I was earning A’s. From that small,
individually selected and invited math sequence class, Miss Berry provided to
the world; teachers, patent attorneys, college department heads (one even in
mathematics), a medical doctor, two business owners, three engineers, an
architect, a Coast Guard career officer, and a company president. Each of us
was able to go on to a level of professional success of which we, in a small
rural town in southeastern Iowa, could never have dreamed of, or even
reasonably aspired to.

To this day I regret that I never returned to Fort Madison in time to thank Miss
Berry and to tell her how it all turned out for me…I don’t think she would have
been nearly as surprised as I still am. It was exactly what she had expected,
and demanded of each of us. But I do hope she knows just how grateful I am.
Twice each academic year, I am invited by Dr. Goldstein to deliver an ethics
seminar for her incoming freshman students in teaching at Okaloosa-Walton
College. As a small tribute to Miss Berry, I always tell each class this story. I
end by asking them the same challenging question; ‘whose life will you
change?’

This article was published in The Daily Democrat of Fort Madison, Iowa, on
Tuesday, November 23, 2004.

Grandpa Wallis and I Share Our Best Christmas Ever

My Grandpa, Edward Lewis Wallis (1869-1951), would have been the perfect
prototype for the rugged early settlers of Southeastern Iowa. He was
descendent from a long line of Orange-Irish, Presbyterians. He was a short,
stocky built man with very strong thick arms, heavy shoulders and a barrel-like
chest. Grandpa was fated to work hard at some demanding physical task
almost every day of his life from early childhood until his death at age 81, and
the strength of his body showed it. His father, my great grandfather John, had
died at the young age of 34 from lung disease complications arising from his
ten-months of internment as a Confederate prisoner-of-war at Camp Ford in
Tyler, Texas. Grandpa was then only eight years old with a young mother and a
four year old brother; too young to become the man of the house. His formal
education was finally and permanently interrupted just prior to the eighth grade,
although for the rest of his life he would be an avid reader of anything and
everything he could get his hands on. His favorite reading material was The
Chicago Tribune, which came to him by mail and only one day after publication.
He would sit in the kitchen each evening following a hard day’s work and read
the new edition all the way through, including the Want Ads.

Grandpa was a quiet man, not given to long bursts of conversation, although
when prompted he had plenty to say against the Roosevelt administration.
Perhaps his quiet nature was the result of his working alone so much of the
time. He just kept to his own counsel. I never really doubted that Grandpa loved
me, loved each one of his seven grandchildren, but I cannot remember even one
time that he ever told me he did.

Grandpa married at age 28. At that time he was employed as a laborer in the
Fort Madison chair factory on First Street, for $8.00 per week. I tell you this so
you can appreciate that in his entire life, he never held a single high paid, or
skilled position, and yet was able to accumulate modest wealth for the times,
through his frugal spending nature and disciplined saving ways. By age 60, and
at the time of the Great Depression, Grandpa owned his home and five small
rental houses in Fort Madison, plus a 40 acre farm on the Old Chalk Ridge along
the Old West Point Road. Not bad on eight dollars per week! He did not drive a
car, but as a younger man would walk from the end of the trolley line at the
Perfection Tire Company to his farm, work all day and then walk back to the
trolley line at night.

As a youngster, I always thought the dirtiest trick life ever played on Grandpa
was having him born on Christmas Day. He just absolutely got cheated out of a
‘gift-receiving’ day. You just have to know when you share a birth day with
Jesus; yours will often be little noted, if noted at all. By contrast, I had a very
good deal. Being born on the 15th of December, my birthday was just far
enough away from Christmas for two separate and unique ‘gift-receiving’ days;
yet close enough that I could offer-up combining those two smaller gifts for
something large and special at Christmas. This is exactly the deal I offered to
Grandpa as December approached in 1941.

My cousin Larry, who was nine months younger than me, already had a B-B gun
while I did not…a situation that could not be allowed to continue! When I raised
the need to correct that with my parents their negative response was more
often related to the cost issue, rather than the expected, “you’re too young”.
Which I translated to, they might let me have a B-B gun, providing I could find
someone to buy it. So I launched my campaign for combining my up-coming
birthday present and Christmas present into a much grander gift; a Daisy, Red
Ryder lever-action B-B gun. I had selected Grandpa for this distinction because
in my estimation, he was my only close relative who could likely afford the gun.
My lobbying efforts with Grandpa never received any agreement,
encouragement, or even much recognition. In fact, not even a sign that he
understood the importance of erasing this inequity. For the most part it was,
“don’t understand why you need one…can’t even put meat on the table with a B-
B gun.” Later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, he told me,
“There were none for sale as the Army had called them off of the market to be
used to train new draftees”. He had read that in The Chicago Tribune he said,
so it must be true. Right up to Christmas Day, I was certain my campaign had
failed, and when on December 15th he gave me a birthday present, I was sure
there would be no B-B gun in my immediate future!

On Christmas morning Grandpa and Grandma would walk from their home on
Avenue F around the corner and down to our house on Third Street to exchange
gifts with our family and to see what Santa Claus had brought my little brother
and me. I remember standing in the front window of our dining room, watching
and waiting for them to come around the corner. Why would they be so late
today of all days? Maybe it just takes longer when you have a B-B gun to wrap.
Finally, here they came down the sidewalk, both taking short, measured steps in
the new-fallen snow. As usual, their arms were full of gifts, but no long package
that looked even remotely like it held a B-B gun. When we met them at the front
door to take some of their load my heart sunk, there was no gun box there!

My parents had already made me promise to be polite, a good sport regardless
of what I received…or, did not receive. And I truly gave it a good try, but I know
my disappointment was well displayed on my face. Grandpa was my last hope
for a B-B gun, at least for this year. I helped Grandma off with her coat and
reached to help Grandpa off with his, as well. I took the collar and as I started to
peel it back, he straightened his arms to ease their exit. Something hit the floor
in front of him, something he had concealed under his long overcoat. It was a
long, narrow box…a person could put a B-B gun in a box like that! He bent,
picked it up and turned to put the box in my arms. He had a wide smile like I had
never before seen on his face…and until his death would never see him
duplicate again. With that smile and the sparkle in his eyes he could have easily
passed for one of Mr. Claus’ jolly elves.

I forgot about hanging the coats and sat right down on the floor in the entryway
of our house to get at that box. It opened to reveal a Red Ryder model, lever-
action, Daisy B-B gun. The stock and the forearm were real wood, later
because of the war they would just be plastic, all the metal was dark blue and
shown bright with a light coating of oil. It had a ring attached to the right side of
the pistol grip and a rawhide leather thong looped through it so Red Ryder could
hang the gun on his saddle-horn. It was a beauty…just what I had been hoping
for, and fearing to never receive. In the bottom of the box were two cardboard
cylinders filled with copper clad B-B’s…real copper! When the war started,
everything copper was immediately recalled as a critical material and the only B-
B’s then available were lead. They were not nearly as accurate; lead shot fouled
the barrel and then flattened out when they hit something.

In the years following, I would continue to have some truly great Christmas’, but
I remember that one in 1941 for the best Christmas present I ever received and
for the con job my Grandpa pulled on me. It must have been the best, because
now all of these years later I still remember the pungent smell of the machine oil
when I first opened the box and the easy balance of that rifle in my hands. But
the most wonderful gift of all, I knew at that moment and forever more, just how
much my Grandpa really loved me. If he was to never say a word about that
again…I would still always know! I also remember that wide smile on his face
and the sparkle in his eyes. Definitely, we two; boy and man, had just shared
our best Christmas ever.

This short story was published in The Daily Democrat of Fort Madison, Iowa, on
Friday, December 9, 2005.