First Grader's Elder's Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Grandma and Grandpa Cowley
Elder's Relationship to Child: Maternal Grandparents
1. If we are Native American, what is our Native American Nation? Grandpa Cowley's maternal great grandfather was 1/2 Seneca Indian.
2. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? The other countries both Grandma and Grandpa's ancestors were from are Germany and Ireland. Grandpa says he has some Scotch in him as well as a small amount of Seneca Indian.

3. When did our family come to the United States? We believe the German ancestors came to America around 1716 and the Irish ancestors around 1848.4. 4. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? Grandpa and Grandma have always only spoken English, however Grandma remembers her Grandma Yochum and her Aunt Helen speaking in German, especially when they did not want you to know what they were talking about.
5. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
Grandma's and Grandpa's childhood was without TV. We did listen to the radio a lot! Grandpa went to a one-room school through 6th grade and most of the time had only one other student in his class. After 6th grade, he was bussed 15 miles to an school. Grandma attended a Catholic Parochial School through 8th grade. There was no Kindergarten, so you started out in first grade. School busses picked students up in a central location so Grandma used to have to walk about 2 miles to the local high school and then take a bus to the Catholic School. Grandpa remembers playing marbles, Kick the Can, Ring Around the Rosy, Handy Andy Over, Leap Frog, and go fishing. In the wintertime he would play Fox and Geese, and go sledding and ice skating. He went to the movies every Friday night to watch Abbott & Costello or Cowboy movies. He also hung out around the local nurseries and was paid $0.10 to carry nursery stock. Because he lived near a railroad yard, sometimes the engineer on the train would give him a ride in the steam engine. Because there was a war going on (WWII), there was little money, so he made his own entertainment.
Grandma lived in a big old house also by a train yard. She remembers going for a walk with her dad down the tracks every Sunday evening after the last train had passed through. She would walk the track and her dad would hold her hand to help her keep her balance. After school she played house with her dolls, played Hop scotch, Statue, jumped rope, made mud pies, played Sevens, and Step School. She had a big swing in the front yard that her dad would swing her in and on Sunday Afternoons after a big Sunday dinner, everyone would go for a ride in the car and get an ice-cream cone. Grandma lived in a house that used to be a "hotel", and contained a room with an old player piano. Her older sister would play the piano and Grandma would get up on the bar and "dance". There was a big mirror in back of there so she could watch herself. Grandma's dad would sit there while she was dancing to make sure she didn't fall. There was an apple orchard where she used to climb the trees and pick apples. In the winter she would slide down the hill, make snow angels and forts to have snowball fights with other children in the neighborhood. There was an old icebox in the kitchen and when the ice man would deliver ice for it, it was kept in the woodshed. In the summer grandma and her friends would chip off pieces of ice to suck on. There always seemed to be a lot of parades that we went to. Grandma's mom loved parades and grandma grew to love them also. Catholic school was very strict. The nuns made every one line up on the stairway in the morning and there had to be complete silence before we entered our classroom. Then we all had to stand by our desk until the nun (teacher) came in. We then did the Pledge of Allegiance, said a prayer and had class. You had to sit with your hands folded on your desk while the teacher was talking, feet had to be flat on the floor and you had to sit up straight! By the time I was in the second grade, we had moved into the village and I was able to walk to school. We also went home for lunch at 12:00 and had to be back to school at 1:00. School let out at 3:00 PM.

First Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Mary Evelyn Goodenough Hubbard
Elder's Relationship to Child: Grandmother
1. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? English (Goodenough) and Swedish (Nelson)
2. When did our family come to the United States? William Henry Goodenough born 12/7/1849 in Maidstone, Kent, England. He arrived in America in 1880. Victor Nelson (Nilson) 1861-1928, married Beda Sofia Stockhus (1868-1941) born in Smoland, Sweden.

3. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? English
4. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
I was born in Hood River Oregon on March 8, 1933. It was during the Depression. With bank closings, my Father sold our ranch, and we moved to Yakima, WA. A year later, we moved to Arcata, CA, and after a year there, we moved to Sumner, WA where I attended 4th. -12th grades. In 1st grade I attended a country school. My brother and I would walk a mile to school and back home. There were two grades in each classroom. Second grade, in Yakima, WA was a brief, yet fun time. Third grade was in Arcata, CA. I took piano lessons at Humbolt College. My childhood was filled with love and guidance. It was a difficult time for my parents. We were a very close family, filled with respect and admiration for one another.

First Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Grandpa Jerry Wohlfeil
Elder's Relationship to Child: Grandfather
1. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? Germany

2. When did our family come to the United States? 18383.

3. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? German
4. What are the words for "school" & "home" in that language? die schule and das hein
5. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
It was a 3 room school with 110 students. We had 1-2, 3-4-5, and 6-7-8 classes. We also learned religion and everyone was white. In winter we had a lot of fun going downhill on a sled, playing Fox and Goose, Tag and a Circle Game. In the summer we would get together to play ball with tennis balls and bats, race our bikes. I didn't get my own bike until I was 11 years old.

First Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Florence Mensah
Elder's Relationship to Child: Grandmother
1. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? Ghana2.

2. When did our family come to the United States? December 2000
3. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? FANTI
4. What are the words for "school" & "home" in that language? SUA BEA and EFIYE
5. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
I was 6 years old in 1931. At that time schooling was not a priority in the family. My parents were farmers and we children needed to help on the farm. At home, I helped with the chores and with my mother's produce that she was selling. The school was about 5 miles away from where we lived and we walked to school and back from school. It was a school rule that no student should be found on the street after 6:00pm. All parents complied with this rule.

First Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Kathy Spencer
Elder's Relationship to Child: Grandmother
1. If we are Native American, what is our Native American Nation? Cherokee- Mikayla's mother was adopted as an infant and her biological father was Cherokee.
If we are not a Native American family
2. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? My family was German and Swiss, Mikayla's Grandpa's was English.

3. When did our family come to the United States? My family came to the United States in the 1840's, 1880's and 1890.

4. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? English
5. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
I grew up on a farm near Rosalia- we raised grain, cattle, rabbits, chickens and pigs. We had a big garden. I learned to milk the cows and we sold the separated cream as well as the eggs. My brother and I had to wash the eggs. My paternal grandfather was a butcher and we had a sausage maker and made huge batches of sausage. We made our own cottage cheese and butter. My paternal grandmother made many German Dishes. When I was Mikayla's age, on a dare from my brother I slid down the trunk of a large tree that we had climbed and broke my ankle. MY maternal grandmother who lived with us, diapered a crippled chicken from the hen house and gave it to me for a pet! I always loved horses and had ponies and big horses all my life. Pancho, Lady Guenevier, Buck, Sol and Pony- my last horse who pulled the buggy in which Grandpa Art Courted Grandma Ida. I am named for both of my grandmothers - Katherine and Ida.

Second Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Dwaraki Bai Pengugonda
Elder's Relationship to Child: Grandmother (Great Aunt)
1. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? India

2. When did our family come to the United States? 19673. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? Telugu ( A south Indian Language)
3. What are the words for "school" & "home" in that language? School-Patasala Home- Gruhamu
4. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
I was one of nine children. I was born in a fairly large city on the Southeastern coast of India. This city was a large sea port whose main industries are fishing and coconuts.
When I was 6 years old I was in second and third grade. In India, one starts school when he is a 4 year old in first grade. In my time there was no such thing as kindergarten in India. We had school for six days a week, but on Saturdays we had a half-day and were done by noon.
Every morning the milk man would come to the house to deliver milk. But the milk did not come delivered in glass bottles like in the states. The milk man would actually walk from house to house with a cow. He would milk the cow in front of our house and give us fresh milk in a large vessel. Vegetables were also delivered from house to house and purchased from a man who pushed around a cart in the neighborhood.
Each day began by waking up at 5 am. I would sit and read, with all my brothers and sister, for one hour every morning before I took a shower and ate breakfast. I would walk to school about a 15 minute walk every day. Once there, all my classes took place in the same room, with the same teacher from 8 am to 4 p m. I got one break during the school day at 12 noon to go home and eat lunch for one hour. All my siblings had a lunch break at the same time, so we would all eat lunch together.
I had the same classes that one would have he e in the states, reading, math, art, language (Telugu), etc. I started to learn English when I was in second grade.
After school I would play with my friends and brothers and sisters. Some of the games I would play were Hop scotch, a form of Jacks, fly kites and marbles. After playing I would go home, eat dinner, read for an hour and then go to sleep.
On weekends I would spend time with family. Either they would come to my house or I would go to theirs for a meal and some fun. At night I would often go to see plays with my mother at the local temple. This was a form of entertainment that she enjoyed very much and I would join her to keep her company. On our way home we would purchase fresh jasmines (a flower native to India) that we would put in our hair to give it a wonderful fragrance.
I had a wonderful childhood filled with many fruitful memories. I often feel the urge to go back to the town in which I was born and the house in which I grew up. I've been told the town has changed a lot since the time I lived there. Unfortunately it has fallen apart a bit. You can never go back to the past, but you can always cherish the wonderful recollections of your experiences.

First Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Cathy Short
Elder's Relationship to Child: Grandmother
1. What is/are the country/countries of origin for our family? My father was a Canadian. His grandfather came to Canada from England, to run a Royal Canadian Mounted Police fort in the Canadian Province of Alberta. The house he lived in at the Fort was later moved to Calgary, Alberta where it is a tourist attraction. My mother was American and was born in Shelby County, Texas. She and my father met in Mexico City, where they both worked for a Canadian bank. I was born in Canada, as my parents lived in Toronto. When I was seven years old, my mother and I moved to Texas.
2. What language(s) does/has our family spoken? English and Spanish (from working in Mexico.)5.

3. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
When I was 6 and 7 my family lived in Winnepeg, Manitoba Canada. The main thing I remember about that was winter. The school playground was converted into a huge ice rink, and at recess, we all went out to skate on double runner skates. As you can imagine, it took a very long time to change from what I wore in the classroom to winter clothes for the playground or for walking home from school. I remember liking to ride in a sleigh drawn by horses. Each year, my mother and I would ride the train for a very long time to visit her family in Texas. That was fun-- I loved sleeping in a "berth" and walking from one car to another on the train, and eating in the dining car.
That was during World War II, when both Canada and the United States were sending soldiers to fight. We had Air Raid Drills , when loud sirens would be heard and everyone practiced going to safe places like basements. If a practice drill was announced during school hours, we all had to get under our desks and cover our heads. It was very frightening. Families learned a lot about what to do in an emergency.
When I went to visit in Texas, it seemed as though people there talked very slowly and left off the ends of words. I was teased because of my Canadian accent. I had never seen black people until I visited Texas and I could not understand why the white people there treated them so cruelly. There were separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites, separate restrooms and special seats at the back of the bus for blacks. It was many, many years later before children of all colors went to school together and became friends. Now, we realize how unfair that was, thanks to movements led by such people as Martin Luther King.

Second Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Hallfridur Gudbrandsdottir Schneider
Elder's Relationship to Child: Paternal Grandmother

1. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
When I was six years old, I was a happy girl on a farm on the south coast of Iceland. The population there can trace its ancestry to the settlers who came from Norway before 1000 AD. My father, a printer and a former editor of a newspaper, had been asked to start a cooperative store for farmers in an isolated, harbor less area. To the south was the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and west were swift glacier rivers, and in the north were mountains, volcanoes and glaciers. My older brother, Kjartan, and I followed the adults around the helped them with their endless chores. In the spring, they let out the horses, cows and sheep to graze in the meadows. The cows were milked every morning and night. Some of the milk was used for drinking, some was churned into butter and some was boiled and processed into our favorite morning meal- skyr, which is similar to yogurt. We were allowed to go to the chicken house and find freshly laid eggs to bring to the kitchen and then fee the chickens. We watched sheep being sheered, then the wool was washed and dried. In the fall, some of the wool was sold and the women combed the rest and spun it into thread. The women then knitted our clothes both by hand and by machines. My mother wove material for clothes, bedspreads and tablecloths.
My brother and I watched the grass being cut with scythes and dried with the help of rakes and then tied in big bundles and brought home on horses. Animals had are an important part of my memories. My brother and I watched when lambs, colts, calves, kittens and puppies were born. We found many nests of the numerous wild birds.
In the winter, all people sat on their beds in the main room and did their special things. The men carved wood, mended riding gear, and other things. The women sewed and embroidered. There was always a reader or a leader in song and poetry.
There has always been a high literacy level in Iceland. My brother and I were taught to read by an old woman who had taught many children to read while knitting fishermen's mittens. Each mitten had a thumb at each side so that when one thumb wore out, the fisherman could reverse the mitten and still have a good thumb. After she knit each row. The lady would point to the letters with her empty knitting needle.
When I was seven we moved to the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik, where my father had gotten a job. We forded deep rivers, rode horses and I saw my first car and truck. Although there were lots of surprises in the city, I missed the animals on the farms. The next 7 summers I would spend on a farm near our old one, then come back to the city in the fall for school. I learned to swim in the warm outdoor pools, heated by geothermal heat.

Second Grader's Elder Story
School Year 2000-2001
Elder's Name: Grandpa Carlson

1. What was your childhood like at home and school when you were 6,7 or 8 years old?
I went to 1st grade and part of 2nd grade in Spokane, WA. I remember walking to school with the neighborhood boys and girls. Sometimes my parent would drive me if I was too late for the group. The kids at school liked to play marbles at recess. We would play three different games. My favorite was "in the pot" We would dig a small hole and each player put 3 marbles in the hole then step 5 steps back from the hole and make a line. We would roll our big marble towards the hole and try to make it go in the hole. If you were the first to roll your marble into the hole you won all the marbles in the pot.
We also did a lot of chasing, climbing, swinging and games at recess.
At home we played with a scooter. It was about 2,5 feet long with two 4 inch wheels. The wheels were connected through the axles with a piece of metal about 4 inches wide. We would stand on this part with one foot while we pushed off the ground with the other foot. The back wheel had a lever that we stepped on for a brake while the front wheel had a 2 foot handle attached to it for our hands to grip. We would have fun going up and down the sidewalks and around our
driveway.
At times I would hear this tap-tap-tapping coming from my dad's study. He used a manual typewriter to write many of his letters. There were no computers in the homes back then.