The photo above is the only school group photo that Daddy ever had. Students in the photo were identified about 1982 by my father Robert Thomas "Tommy" Nipper and neighbor Geneva Lingerfelt, who is also pictured in the group. My mother Beulah (Cline) Nipper wrote down the student names as follows: Gussie Kelly, Lois Jones, Thelma Turner, Dorothy Frye, Lula Belle McMillan, Syble Barr, Eugene Reynolds, T. C. Frye, Arnold Malone, Millard D. Manery, Robert Smith, Verna Mae Parkinson, Fannie Sue Stanton, Geneva Nancy Lingerfelt, Geneva Frye, Leo Keaton, Donald Moore, Glenn Smith, Robert Thomas "Tommy" Nipper, Willard Overstreet, W. A. Barr, Harold Wade, Juanita Kennedy, Arrants Tallent, Henry Stamey, James Stamey, Roy Keaton, Archie Wattenbarger, Elizabeth Pierce, Gladys McNabb, Lora Moss, Howard Miller, and Eva Stiles.
Tommy Nipper is the student squatting on the front row, second from the far right, and an arrow pointing to him has been drawn in ink. In the background is the front entrance of North City Elementary School on Palos Street in Athens, Tennessee. The foreground shows the dirt parking area where students stand, and to the left is the sidewalk entrance. The school housed first through eighth grades. Daddy attended this school from first through eighth grade, as did my sister and I. We enjoyed having some of the same teachers who taught Daddy, especially Miss Elsie Taylor, my all-time favorite and most influential teacher. I would not have become a seventh grade teacher nor have graduated from college except for her insistence that gumption was the only requirement. Daddy's only remaining report card is from Mrs. Gruthrie's seventh grade class of 1934 - 1935.
written by Sandra Jo (Nipper) Ratledge, June 2, 2000, updated Feb. 1, 2011
Public Domain, but please include this site in your sources
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by
Sandra Ratledge
All you kinfolks, put some mail in that old box!