CHAPTER ONE
YOU CAN CALL ME MARGARET

The year, 1969, we entered Miss Savage’s sixth grade class in the small town of Fairfax, Virginia, twenty miles outside of Washington, D.C. To gain perspective, free speech protests took place on the college campus in Berkeley, California in 1964. The riots in Wash- ington, D.C. following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. took place in 1968 and the following year, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bounced about on the moon’s surface. In the decade of the 1960’s, Hot Wheels and Barbie were in, the Peace Corp began, and Willie Nelson recorded his first album.

We were eleven and twelve years old in1969 having lived those years within the secure bounds of an elementary school that stood students outside the classroom door for talking too much and possibly bent over in fear of a paddle to the bottom in the principal’s office. I did experience the former only once because that was all it took. I never knew what precipitated the latter though my recollection was that Miss Savage kept her class in order with none of that. The school overall left

2 JAN PRICE

long memories of living and learning and in Miss Savage’s class, much more.

Layton Hall Elementary School opened in 1956. Miss Savage began there in 1957, the year some of us were born. I always thought the school was named after a famous person named Layton Hall but after searching now fifty-some years later, the name seems to be of the area in our town known as Layton Hall. Or who was that guy?

The building, of course, was 1950’s style, flat-roofed and two stories with two long rows of tall classroom windows running across the front and across the back against austere dark red brick. Those classrooms had all windows on one side and all closets on the other side, tall and wide folding doors, plenty of storage and lots of classroom to spare. Long, straight, looming and enchanting hallways ran down the middle of each of the two floors. Because we were little, they seemed big. I would never forget the details of that wonderful place or the teachers I had there. It felt like a happy place, and a safe place.

At the time, while we were too little to be big kids partici- pating in the unrest, Miss Savage was thirty-four and may have been too old. We were a peaceful bunch. Miss Savage was my favorite teacher of all time. I always knew, too, she was everybody else’s favorite teacher.

When people of our age see each other and start talking about Miss Savage being their favorite teacher, when students still remain in touch with her, still think of her, still thank her, I ask why. She would say because she loved teaching. But even the students who did not have Miss Savage wish they had Miss Savage. There are people walking around who had her and are thankful and people walking around who did not have her and still wish they had. They did love the sixth grade

THE NEVER FORGOTTEN CHILD 3

teacher they had, I am sure, because that’s the kind of school it was.

When I first began thinking about writing about Miss Savage, I stopped by Teddy’s house thinking he had been in her class. His older sister, Florence, had. Teddy was, but then got moved out due to overcrowding. He didn’t like it then and doesn’t like it thinking about it now. Teddy was moved to Mrs. Johnson’s sixth grade class which turned out wonder- fully, along with the ability to look out of the front of the building at the goings on. Teddy would want to have had both teachers.

Miss Savage lives in Fairfax County still. She lives at the beach in Florida during the winter and the beach in Maryland during the summer, and she deserves this. I think she’s in the same shape as when we were in her class, with the same sense of humor and wit but surely the richer by now, pedaling circles every morning on that stationary bicycle as she sees fit. She is still fit. I told her I wanted to write about her, and she said, “Yes.” So, we wrote about her together.

When our endeavor began, Miss Savage was preparing to go to Florida for the winter. We maintained contact about life in the coastal sunshine and once she returned in the spring, began pulling together memories of her life. As a writer thinking about all the stories Miss Savage began sending me, I knew it would be full of charm.

As a retired reading teacher knowing how much effort goes into learning to read, I grew over the years to expect adult readers to put their minds to the reading. “Lazy readers” are not for me. The story must come to the reader and the reader must also come to the story. This writing includes all of Miss Savage’s stories she shared with me starting from childhood, often in her own words, including her antics and insights. It

4 JAN PRICE

includes what life was like as a student for her growing up and for us in our elementary school in the neighborhood where she taught. Come prepared to participate as our reader.

Miss Savage told me early on that my writing was lovely and truth be told, her compliment made more than my day. She wrote, “You know, Jan, you can call me Margaret— honest people have called me worse. As a matter of fact, when I met my half-brother for the first time when he was six and I was seventeen, he asked if he should call me ‘Half- Margaret Anne.’ I told him to call me whatever he wanted.”

I wrote back, “Your writing is lovely, too, Margaret Anne! You said to call you Margaret, and I’m taking the liberty just this once to call you ‘Margaret Anne.’ I can hear your family speaking to their young girl and such a perfect name, I had to try it out.”

As the writing went along, we settled on them all, Margaret Anne, Margaret, Miss Savage, and Moggy from way back before “Half-Margaret Anne” came to be. And so the story begins with a question. Why would we never forget Margaret Anne Savage? This is an effort to find out.