"I Can Do That"

Be on look out for first story, "I Can Do That" A Promise Made, A Promise Kept" Henrietta Hester Harris's Life Story. 

Ruby Henrietta Bundy Hester Harris (HHH)

• The Woman who founded the longest active Day Care Centers in North America
• The Woman who planted seeds in so many Children’s lives over a 58 year period that her legacy will live for ever  has an x unknown expositional number of fruit born

• The little 12-year-old girl who went to the Church Alter and Promised God She would do the best she could do with His help.
• The little girl who carried the newspaper for 1 penny per paper while growing up during the depression on a dairy farm
• The little girl who walked to School one mile each way
• The big girl who paid every cent for her College education
• The woman who started a family while working up to three jobs, attended College and started  family all at the same time
• The woman who worked at jobs that prepared her to set up in Church one night and say silently “ Lord I can do That, when the Pastor said what this neighborhood needs is some type of day care for all the women who now work after World War ll.  Thus was born Tiny Tots Nursery School that became Hester's Creative Schools...Infant Care, Kindergarten, First through Third Grade Schools. Morning, Day Care and Evening Care

• Pioneer in Child Care, Developed Modern Child Care USA
• Pioneer in Recycling especially Recycling used in Children's Creative Art Work

• The Woman who loved and took care of two dying husbands for so many, many years, My God where did she get the courage and strength?
• The Woman who loves her family so deeply and has reared them to be good Citizens, good people, intelligent and hard working people that have made immeasurable contributions to the world, be they big or small
• The Woman who has given me a second Mother, not a step-mother and a blended family that is "Family", not blended, a family that was always my dream and wish
• The Woman who gave friend of over forty years Leroy Leftwitch more than any other person in his entire life including the “The Perfect Catch.”
• The list goes on and on and only you and your memories can be added
• The Woman with the Atlantic Ocean as her back yard at Emerald Isle, The Badin Lake House (A Slice Of Heaven), Cone Lake in back yard of her home and now resides in one of the most progressive retirement centers in the United States Wellspring.
• Use of Loving Discipline when all others in circa 1960's and 1970's were saying let the child decide…what a mistake the latter has turned out to be
• Use of proper nutrition and never ever let any child that looked malnourished or too poor to eat breakfast go hungry to start day hungry
• Remained positive with much adversity in life, example taking care of two dying husbands for 25 plus years and then taking care of third friend in his dying days

• Plus Much More A Must Read for all those who are interested in a REAL "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND"
• A true life adventurer who has visited over fifty Countries and all fifty States in USA.
• Publishing soon.....be on look out for truly amazing story of an amazing woman
• The Woman who saved North Carolina Child Care from being a Department of Child Welfare through her Positive Political Activism
• Attended and Taught at International Child Care Event in Beijing, China
• The Woman who became a trustee of her beloved High Point University
• A Woman of vision who dedicated her life to others by planting seeds with eternal value, an example is one of her first Students is a Medical Doctor.

 

Inauguration of Dr. Nino Quebin Left to Right: Ronald C Harris, Henrietta Hester Harris and Dr. Nido Quebin President of High Point University.

 

 

"I Can Do That"

 

  

Memoirs of Ruby Henrietta Bundy Hester Harris

   

And Other Writings

 

 

Table of Contents

 TOC \o "1-2" Table of Contents.................................................................................................................. PAGEREF _Toc3692206 \h 2

Memoirs...............................................................................................................................PAGEREF _Toc3692207 \h 3

I Can Do That!..................................................................................................................PAGEREF _Toc3692208 \h 3

Early Life..........................................................................................................................PAGEREF _Toc3692209 \h 5

Growing Up....................................................................................................................  PAGEREF _Toc3692210 \h 10

The Courtship.................................................................................................................  PAGEREF _Toc3692211 \h 12

Badin Lake1952.............................................................................................................  PAGEREF _Toc3692212 \h 16

Other Writings..................................................................................................................... PAGEREF _Toc3692213 \h 18

Biographical Sketch......................................................................................................... PAGEREF _Toc3692214 \h 18

Hester’s Creative Schools Time Line...............................................................................  PAGEREF _Toc3692215 \h 22

Henrietta’s Trips.............................................................................................................. PAGEREF _Toc3692216 \h 23

Mother Writ Large.......................................................................................................... PAGEREF _Toc3692217 \h 24

 

Memoirs

I Can Do That!

One Sunday early in our marriage as Junnie and I sat in church our minister’s sermon was about the newly formed community clubs and their relationship with the community churches. He said our community, Bessemer, which is now incorporated into the City of Greensboro, needed a nursery school and a kindergarten. I sat straight up in the pew and said to myself. “Lord, here I am and I can do that!” I had earned a B.S. Degree in Home Economics, from High Point College, which required a course in Child Development. The laboratory experience required was to work in all phases of the children’s day and do a case study in a federally funded nursery school in High Point.

Tiny Tot Nursery School was born with a dream and a promise to become a place to love, nurture, and teach young children. As the school grew in numbers and knowledge, we realized what a special position we held. We held in our hands the future: future parents, future community leaders, future business men and women, perhaps a future Nobel Prize winner or even a future president. The first child enrolled is now a doctor in Columbia, South Carolina. We continue to keep in touch with many of “our” children. We now have some of their grandchildren in our schools. Their success is our success and happiness.

Greensboro continued to grow, thus offering parents, women, a wide variety of positions in the work place. Society was making great changes with this growth and with changes came the necessity for their preschool children to have a beneficial place to spend this time when they were away from their parents and their homes.

We quickly realized if we were to serve our clientele we needed to grow, thus we built (as far as we know) the first building built in North Carolina for a nursery school in 1953. This brought a name change to Hester’s Creative Schools, Inc.  As the city and county grew, we built four more buildings, and renovated a church and four houses!

My family and I dedicated our lives to making this business thrive – to be the best – to offer the best – to give the best to young children. Because Hester’s has never lost sight of that goal, we succeeded and grew by leaps and bounds.

To keep up with educational changes through the years, I attended Graduate School at UNC-G, Lausanne Montessori School in Memphis, Tennessee through the Lausanne School in London, England, summer school at East Carolina University, along with many workshops and short courses. By special invitation through International Association of Childhood Education, I attended the University of Beijing, China for a China – U.S. Joint Conference on Early Childhood Education.

The history of Hester’s Creative Schools, Inc. is my personal story, of long working hours with visual results of seeing the lives of young children unfold as their cognitive ability and physical bodies develop to find their place in this world.

PLANT FOR A YEAR, PLANT RICE

PLANT FOR A CENTURY, PLANT A TREE

PLANT FOR ETERNITY, EDUCATE A CHILD.

CONFUCIUS

Early Life

My mother Pearl Ann Barber and Father, Otis Cowin Bundy were married on April 5, 1925.

My father owned half a farm (with his brother) on Guilford College Road, almost one mile from Jamestown N.C. My granny had just sold some of acreage of the farm to the City of High Point to be used in building the High Point City Lake. This gave my father money to build a modest new house along the road. While the house was being built he and my mother lived in a one room log cabin without any facilities.

The log cabin was my beginning, as that is where I was conceived. I remember that log cabin.  Only in the recent years have I realized – there was my beginning – humble!

I was born at home in the new house on March 9, 1926.

Twenty two months later there was a sister and eight years later a baby brother! They were both brunettes – early I realized I was the only redhead! Later there was one third cousin with fiery red hair.

Sometimes this red hair was a cross to bear, especially when the boys called me “red” and sometimes pulled my hair!  Fifty years later I got my revenge when I saw them bald, gray or white headed at our 50^th year high school reunion!

My mother was 32 when she married, an “old” mother.  I know now she was a “smart” mother for that time -- the 1920’s and 30’s!!!

My Granny Bundy named me for her husband Henry Bundy. Her youngest daughter was named Ruby Gertrude, thus the name Ruby Henrietta Bundy.

My father was born to Henry and Judith Matthews Bundy on August 11.

I remember very little about my father from my childhood. I know he always had to work long and hard hours.  He had a son by a previous marriage being raised by Granny – so Granny always took money first on his pay day.

My father came home late at night, after work, and left at day light early in the morning when he was a supervisor of milk routes for Clover Brand Dairies.

My mother was afraid after he left for work so she would put me in the bed with her and teach me the ABC’s, to count to 100 and more, nursery rhymes.  We would talk until daylight then sleep until late morning. I still fear that dark night.

My main memory of my father at home is that occasionally he held me in his arms as he ate a meal.

When I was six years old my mother took me to the big school to get my arm “scratched” like a kitty scratch. This had to be so I would start to school!  This was the small pox vaccination.

The only playmates I had until this time were Ruth and Hubert Thornton who lived on an adjoining farm. Their mother was my mother’s only neighbor and friend. They would see each Monday morning who could hang the weekly wash on the clothes line first!

The first two and a half years I was required to walk the mile to and from Jamestown School. It was progress to be able to ride in the long yellow bus, which stopped in front of our house.

An outstanding memory of first grade was when we heard the train whistle blow -- most of the children stood on their seats to see the train go by. The teacher allowed this for a few weeks, as many of the children had never seen a train. My mother had taken my sister and I on a train ride so the train was old stuff to me!

My father and mother did take us children to see “Gone with the Wind.”  Occasionally we would visit another family on Sunday afternoon. The families we visited were farmers and dairymen, so daddy could “talk shop.” Mother and the children often sat in the car while he visited.

One dairy that was his favorite was Lindale dairy to talk with the “man in charge,” Otis Hester.  Mr. Hester’s three sons, especially the oldest, would squirt milk on my sister and me if we went with our father into the barn. (The second son became my first husband several years later.)

My father’s father died young – by 50 or 52. His mother Judith Matthews Bundy died at age 83.

Granny was the ruler of the family and she tried to run the lives of all her children.  I don’t know why, but know my mother was never invited to any Bundy family activity. Without Granny’s approval, I was not sure until the last minute if my father would walk me down the aisle at my first wedding.  He did escort me to meet Junnie at the alter of the church.

My father had three sisters:  Lena Bundy Lee (maride Joseph Lee); Irma Bundy; and Gertrude Bundy  (married Ford).

My father had one brother, Tandy Bundy, who married Florence. They had one child, Caroline who died at 10 years old.

My mother was born on July 6.  She grew up in the Whisett area on a large farm. Her father was well-to-do by standards of those days. He farmed and in later years he worked on the railroad when they featured dining cars. Her brother worked on the railroad.

My mother took over the care of her father after her mother’s death.   She moved to High Point to live with her younger sister Dora.

She worked as manager of a sales room for Clover Brand Dairies.  They specialized in milk, ice cream, and other dairy products.

My mother had two sisters, Lizzie and Dora.  Mother was middle child. Lizzie was the oldest, Dora the youngest. She married April 5, 1925.  My mother’s brothers and sisters were:  Joe Barber; Rude Barber; Milton Barber; Lizzie Jannie Barber Smith; Pearl Barber Bundy; Dora Barber Fogleman; William Barber. 

I remember my mother’s father, Grandpa Barber, sitting in a chair propped against a tree at Uncle Joe’s house.  We visited one pretty Sunday afternoon.  Later he lived at Aunt Lizzie’s home. He was bed ridden there. My mother went one day and sometimes one night or two days each week to help her sister Lizzie with the work of having him “bed fast” sick in her home. I remember his funeral in Friedens Church.  I sat in the choir with my cousins and cried a few tears because they did.

My mother was a housewife. She sold eggs, greens from the garden and milk from our cows (cows not at the large dairy) to make any spending money!

Our family was land rich!  Cows, horses, mules, chickens, goats, machinery for the work on the farm, about 80 acres of land.

We were money poor.  My parents lost money when the banks failed during the depression.  My parents gave us children just the amount of money they had to.  I worked three jobs to pay my tuition at High Point College.  My first job at public work paid 25 cents per hour!  I was a salesperson at Eford Department Store in High Point.

My parents were very frugal.  To have bought ice cream, candy, or go to a movie was a rare occasion.

My parents taught me to work hard; value money; do not smoke, drink, or cuss; be honest; respect older people; own your own home; attend church; and keep your body clean inside and outside.

Growing Up

In the afternoons after school we were allowed a break or rest time. After this short time we could “do” homework, than help our parents however they needed help, with housework, yard work, or in the garden.

My hobbies were connected to my 4 H club membership.  – 4 H - Head, Heart, Hand and Health. I always had a garden space, helped with yard work, and met the requirements of the 4 H club.

Evenings were homework, wash supper dishes, clear the eating table, bathe, go to bed as early as work was finished.

Weekends were house work, yard work, go to town, go to 4H club meetings, go to Aunt Dora’s for a visit, read a book, sew my clothes, iron clothes.

I always went to Sunday School, and as I grew older, to church.  I sang in the church choir as the youngest member.

I took piano lessons for two years but never learned to read music, so never learned to really play the piano.

My family nor I listened to music just to listen to music. We had a radio but only turned it on at given times.  I was a teenager when TV came out.  We soon bought one, which was turned on just at certain times.

My mother saw that we walked or rode our bicycle to Jamestown (1 mile) to meet the book truck every two weeks on Monday mornings.  We read books every day!

When I started working in the mill and Department store I went about once a week to a movie if I spent the night at Aunt Dora’s.

Summers as a child were spent at home on the farm until I was old enough to go to a public job.  We went to 4H camp one week each summer.

When I was about 14 years old, my father started driving us to the beach for 2, 3, or 4 days in the summer. We packed and carried 90% of our food with us.

The Courtship

Well, I knew I would have to tell these happenings, stories, some secrets and some not, at sometime for this history of mine.  So here goes, some laughs – some tears. 

I had always as a girl growing up dreamed and yes planned to marry a tall, slender, handsome, curly haired young man making – at least capable of making, plenty of money!!!  I knew I could spend it.  I had big dreams. 

I had a deep faith in a Heavenly Father so I knew my life would work out right!  I was right – it has but not as I planned it when I was high spirited and young!

It all started one Saturday night, after working all day in the department store, Ernestine Crouch (my next door neighbor at the time and best friend) and I along with Calvin, her boyfriend, were walking along the Jamestown Main Street approaching the high school when a man stopped his car along side of us, greeted us and started offering us a ride.  Calvin and Ernestine were a “couple” so it was up to me to get in the front seat with the driver!!  Not anyone I would be interested in!  It was Saturday night so here we go!  After introductions -- I knew of his family, they lived on the Lindale Dairy Farm -- we told him we were on our way to the school tennis courts.  I was expecting to meet Charles Hodgin there – to be with me.  Charles was not “my” boyfriend but I would be with him so Ernestine could be with Calvin Loflin!

Charles was not at the tennis courts, so we rode around and ended up at a close-by place for soft drinks.  I don’t remember the details of that evening but arrangements were made to meet again the next day – Sunday!

The new man’s name was Junnie.  He was definitely not what I was looking for as a steady date – he was overweight!! But he had a great smile, black curly hair and he was driving a car!!  He picked us up after church and we drove to an afternoon trip! Rare, as gas was rationed due to the war!

We were together every afternoon or evening except Wednesday.  He told me he would see his regular date Wednesday.  Wednesday early evening he rode by my house several times alone in the car!!

Junnie ate Sunday dinner at my house!

He moved in on me!  No other man ever had a chance!  I would run him off and tell him to never come back!  He would be waiting for me outside Roberts Hall on HPU campus when I came out from my last class!  A free ride home – he was slowly “growing on me,” “winning me over!”  But he was not what I wanted in a serious boyfriend!  I would send him home after each date and tell him to never come back!  He would be there the next afternoon or night!!

Junnie soon asked me to marry him and kept on asking.  I told him I had to have a college degree, but if he wanted to wait I would marry him.  I never stopped to think whether he would wait or not!  Youth! I think I put up with him as he started to help me study by giving out the study questions as I prepared for the various tests!  He could have probably passed all my tests and exams!!  He continued to talk marriage, kissing and hugging, and I eventually gave in by promising to marry him Christmas vacation of my senior year in college.  I had attended college “straight through” by going summer and winter and did finish a four-year course in three years.  The amazing thing is with a major in Home Economics and a minor in science (chemistry, biology, and general science).  I finished “Who’s Who,” honor roll most semesters, all the major and minor courses had two hour labs which were time consuming and extra work!!!   How did I do it?  I don’t know!  I was happy but “weighted” with the idea: “is this the right man for me?”  He didn’t fit all my dreams!!!  At some point I sat quietly and took inventory (smart girl).  I weighed the positive and the negative of this man I couldn’t “run off” or get rid of! 

I recognized I would never find a man who was so good, kind, pleasant, clean, happy, religious – deep faith in God and church, fun, carefree, all the positive possibilities – now the negative only one thing!  He didn’t seem to have one iota of initiative or goals, except to marry me!!!!

Perfection?  There is no one!  I have enough goals and initiative for six people.  He loves me!!  I’ll marry him for his goodness.  It worked!!  I pushed; he went along and helped me obtain my wishes, desires, and goals in life – a true help mate!!  It was a good satisfying life!  I was happy!  He was a real lover. 

I refused to take a chance to have a child until I earned my degree!  Once the degree was secure, we started planning our family.  I ordered a boy – youth - I had been the oldest child in the family – I thought a boy should be the oldest.  I had been teased as a red head so I prayed that if given my choice I would not have a little red headed girl!  Who said I had that choice – youth!

After hours of hard labor, without even one aspirin - I begged the doctor for help; he got down in my face and told me he could not help me and it was a breach birth – butt first – doubled up body – with me screaming until I passed out as she came into life – my first and oldest child – a little red headed girl I loved with all my heart from the first moment I saw her.  She was a good baby!  I tried to spoil her but she just stayed a good baby!  I kept her spotless clean and dressed as “cute” and pretty as was possible for me to do!  (I did this for all three of my babies).
 

Badin Lake1952

I was idly turning through the newspaper when I saw an ad for lots for sale at Badin Lake.  “Badin Lake, where is that?”  I was born a Pisces, so I have always been “water conscious”.  I called for directions.

I suggested to Junnie, my husband and the father of my three children, that we follow through about lake property.  Within a few days we purchased a lot on Eighth Street in Pinehaven Village, a new development on Badin Lake, for $75.

Soon we traded our car for a new station wagon so we could “camp” on our lot.  At that time we had our first child – a daughter, Susan, about three years old.

We took an afternoon “off” from our jobs to go down and clean off our lot.  This entailed pulling weeds and cutting low shrubs.  During a break from the activity I told my husband we were expecting our second child.  He was so excited he made me sit on a log the remainder of the afternoon – no, I could not even pull another weed!

The following year we bought a half interest in a block building down the same road.  My sister and her family shared weekends with us.  We used a portable toilet, and carried water in a 5 gallon milk can.

Later we bought our house on the lake.  Oh what happy times my family shared!  Now we also learned about the “Sunday School”!  This was so important to us as a family, which now consisted of two daughters and a son!  We could now go every weekend from spring to fall because we could attend Sunday School as a family at the lake.  This helped us to meet and make new friends and enhanced our love life!

We always had a station wagon of children who happily shared their experience of attending Sunday School in the “woods”.  They would go home with details to their parents.

Three years after Junnie’s death -- after a 6 ½ year battle with cancer -- I gathered my three children to me to tell them I planned to marry again.  The first question asked was “Mom does Cleo like the lake?”  Of course he did and he and his young son grew to enjoy Sunday School as we blended two families together at the lake!!!

Enter Cleo Harris, After Henrietta lost Junie to Cancer my Father Cleo Harris lost his wife Mary Helen Coble Harris six months later with the same dreaded disease cancer. Little did either know that within three years they would be madly in love and married.

One after noon Henrietta happened to be in her office and a man walked by and she asked one of her staff
"Who is that Man" and the answer was well that's Mr.. Harris. As Henrietta tells the story now she says she fell madly in love the moment she laid eyes on Cleo. My Brother Brian was only six years old at the time and was enrolled in Hester's Creative Schools for Children.  Hence when her children asked " Will He Like the :Lake? little did they know how prophetic that statement was to be.

The lake house was a wonderful cottage built in the 1950's and during the seventies my Father, Cleo redesigned and rebuilt the lake house as it stands today,  a testament to his abilities, talents and his legacy as far as far as the lake house goes. It is named Almost Farm. Dad could read and write blueprints in his head so he totally redesigned the lake house and personally rebuilt it to its present form which is wonderful and Henrietta loves the home. Now all her grandchildren and she enjoy the lake and beach house each summer for at least six weeks.

Junie Hester

Cleo Harris

Cleo and Helen

!

Other Writings

Biographical Sketch

1.    PERSONAL INFORMATION:

HUSBANDS: Junnie T. Hester 1945-1966

Cleo Harris     1969-1996

CHILDREN:         Susan Hester ~ Daughter  Jessica

Elizabeth Hester - Husband Joseph DeBlasio

Tom Hester - Wife Carter and Son Henry Thomas

Ronald Cleo Harris-Wife Cheryl J. Harris, Son Lawrence Craig Harris

Brian Harris

2.    EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND:

1.   Finished Jamestown High School - 1943

Member of Beta Club 4; Choir, 4-H Club l,2,3; Glee Club 1,2,3,4; Dramatic Club 4; Basketball 1,2,3; Newspaper Staff 4; Annual Staff 4; Health Queen Guilford County 4-H Club

2. B.S. in Home Economics - Minor in Science - High Point College; 1943-1946, Member Home Economics Club; Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities; Choir 1; Modern Priscilla Club ( Home Economics Club} 1,2,3; W.A.A. (Women's Athletic Assn) 4; Honor Roll 4; Distinguished Alumni Service Medal - (1946)

3. Attended graduate school at UNC-G, majoring in child development.  Did not finish thesis (my husband died). I became Father and Mother to three children and Director of three nursery schools and kindergartens.

4.   At my request Dr. Irving Sperry, Head of the Home Economics Dept, at UNC-G started a summer short course for nursery school employees.  The second year the classes doubled in attendance.  Through Dr. Sperry I watched the UNC-G Child Development Dept. grow and along with, this public Kindergartens.

5.   I have attended short courses, special classes, including a Montessori course at the Lusanne School in Memphis, Tenn. , and many more too numerous to list. I have attended National Conferences in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Denver, Colo. I attended, by invitation, for ACET, a weeks course at the University of Beijing, China. This included visiting schools, orphanages, child care facilities and a weeks trip on the Yancey River. I have traveled to all fifty states of the United States and visited schools every where possible in China, Japan, Africa and many more.

3.    MEMBERSHIPS:

1.   I grew up in Jamestown Methodist Church. I always helped teach Bible

School from the time I was 12 years old.

2.   I attended Bessemer Methodist Church in the "middle years".

3.    I am a member of Irving Park United Methodist Church. I have served

on the administrative board in various capacities. I am on the finance committee at this time - 1996, 1997 and 1998.

4.     I was Superintendent of the "Bender Worship Center" at Badin Lake.

5. I organized a state organization and served as President - North Carolina
Nursery School Association*

6. I have been active in the local, state and National Association of Early
Childhood Education.

4.    RECENT HONORS:

1. Honored as Woman of the Year in 1961 by the Bessemer Jr. Woman’s Club.

2. Honored by the Greensboro Commission on the Status of Women of Achievement in Business in 1997.

3. Served on The Board of Visitors at High Point University for six years, two of those as Chairperson of the Board.

4. Recognized as the owner of the oldest Child Care and Private School in North America. This was done through Child Care Exchange - Editor: Roger Neugebauers - Redmond, Washington.

5.    HOBBIES & INTERESTS:

1. Leisure time activities;

a. Water Skiing (in younger days) I learned to snow ski at age 65.

b. Boating -lake activities

c. Beach activities'

d.    Reading

e.    Traveling:

Henrietta’s Trips

1. England

2. Austria

3. Germany

4. Switzerland

5. Tangeris – Morocco

6. Spain

7. Japan

8. Thailand

9. Hong Kong

10. China

11. Australia

12. New Zealand

13. Nova Scotia

14. Prince Edward Island

15. Canada:

16. Agapa

17.  Pierce

18. St. Lawrence

19. Quebec

20. Toronto

21. Niagara Falls

22. Nassau

23. St. Thomas

24. Italy

25. Amsterdam

26. St. Martin Island

27. Rio de Janeiro

28. México Cita

29. Alaska

30. África

31. Panamá & Irles Curies

32. Scandinavia

33. Finland

34. Norway

35. Sweden

36. Russia – St. Petersburg

37. France

38. Turkey

39. Greek Isles

40. All Fifty States USA

 

Updated through 1984

 

f.    Gardening - flowers & vegetables

2.   My business of fifty years (49 now - 50. in 1999) has been the foundation of my life. I have enjoyed all phases from planning buildings thru taking an active role in the growth and development of Child Care and the role it has and is playing in:

a.    The role of the employed Mother and Women.

b.    the role of a basic education for young children from infants thru primary school.  Development of N. C. laws pertaining to child care.

c.     I employ 44 women who have been with me for ten to thirty eight years.

 

Hester’s Creative Schools Time Line

Our company was founded as Tiny Tot Nursery School on January 2, 1949.  It was changed from a single owner to a partnership between my husband, Junnie T. Hester and myself during the 1950’s, when we changed the name to Hester’s Creative Schools, Inc.  The name change was due to the growth of the business and to my enrollment in Graduate School at UNC-G.

            3600 E. Bessemer Ave          1949    January 2

            711 Holt Avenue                    1951    About June

            634 Waugh Street                  1954    Late summer

            1819 Dellwood Drive             1956    Summer

            2300 Spring Garden Street    1964    August

            705 Infant Center                               1971

            1806 W. Vandalia Road         1972    August

            608 James Road                    1972    August

            1800 Ben Parkway                 1974    August

            1806 B. W. Vandalia Road    1976    August

            Infant Center                          1988

            Lake Crest at Johnson St      1990

 

Office 2715 Pinedale Road                1978

 

Mother Writ Large 

by

 

Susan Hester

 

 

HISTORY OF AMERICAN WOMEN 1877 – 1977

 

Professor Linda K. Kerber

 

May 15, 1978NTRODUCTION

On January 2, 1949, Ruby Henrietta Bundy Harris opened Tiny Tot Nursery School and Kindergarten in a large house on E. Bessemer Avenue in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Twenty-nine years later, spring, 1978, Henrietta Hester Harris is owner and administrator of Hester’s Creative Schools for Children, Inc. with six locations and eleven hundred children.  When asked to describe how she decided to open a nursery school and how it grew, Henrietta tends to explain it all with lines like: “I just had an inner drive to accomplish” or “I have been led by a Higher Power”.  It seems there is more to it than that.

 

HENRIETTA’ S MOTHER—PEARL ANN BARBER BUNDY

Pearl Ann Barber Bundy married late.  Her mother, Mary Barber₅ had died young₅ and Pearl stayed at home managing the family and dating Herman, spending the better part of her twenties in Whitsett, a small rural town in North Carolina.  For unknown reasons at twenty-eight, Pearl “broke off with Herman, had a falling out with her father and moved to High Point to live with her sister Dora and work in the hosiery mill."1  Dora had room for Pearl and could use the help.  She and the three children had been deserted by her “ne’er do good" husband, and she had gone to work in the mill to support her family.  Although she was an inspector in the mill, not the worst mill job one could have, Pearl left to take a job as a clerk in the salesroom of Clover Brand Dairies, where she met Otis Bundy, a widower who was first a route salesman and later a route supervisor.  Three years later in April, 1925, Pearly now thirty-three years old₅ married Otis.

Upon their marriage, Otis and Pearl were deeded four acres of the Bundy family dairy farm in Jamestown, North Carolina.  They lived in a log cabin until a new house was built.  Pearl immediately began working on the farm and having children and miscarriages.  As Henrietta, born in March, 1926, would write later, "Daddy worked hard on the farm and wanted a ball team of boys.  Mother raised chickens and a garden, kept house and got pregnant. This was her role."  Pearl had three children and several miscarriages, and finally the doctor said "no more."  Otis saw to it that she had a new nice house and always had a car to drive, but because he never gave her extra cash₃ she had to be thrifty with her "egg money."  She continued to work in the home and on the farm, actually becoming more of a "farm hand" as her children went off to school.  Henrietta says she was "close" to her mother but has a sense of Pearl as a rather passive woman.  Reflecting on what real influences Pearl and Otis had on her, Henrietta says she was impressed most by her parents’ sessions around the kitchen table when her father brought home his pay check, giving explicit directions as to how it was to be spent.  Henrietta writes; "My mother had to account for every penny—she had to list even a 5¢ cake of soap.  I remember every pay day—Daddy would bring in his check—they would sit at the kitchen table and he told her how and what to do with the money.  First go to the bank and put so much in savings, usually $15.00, then pay Duke Power, the telephone bill, buy groceries, buy his work shoes and clothes, etc.  Those sessions of theirs around the kitchen table probably were the best business training I received and a great influence I’m sure."

When asked to comment further on the influence her parents had on her, Henrietta observes that Pearl was a good mother though rather passive.  It was Otis who had "the drive," worked hard and ran the farm and the family—with some input from Granny and Aunt Gertrude.

 

GRANNY AND GERTRUDE

                Henrietta grew up on the four acres deeded to her parents by Granny Bundy, Otis’ mother.  Granny lived a mile away in "the original home place."  When Granny's husband, Henry Bundy, died with sugar diabetes, Granny opened the home place as a boarding house for teachers in order to support her five children.  As Gran­ny lived just a mile away, Henrietta spent a lot of time there; she would set the table and help serve the dinner to the boarding teachers and visit with her aunts, Granny's daughters.  When Henrietta describes her Granny as a strong-willed woman, it is a mix of condemnation and respect.  Granny was "extremely domineering, bossy— ran all her children's business and, when she could, her grandchildren's.  Every afternoon she walked over a mile each way to help her two sons milk the cows on their large dairy farm -- probably to remain the bossy mother and to keep control of her children."  But when asked who in particular offered her encouragement, especially in terms of what she would do as a young adult, Henrietta also writes, "I didn't need encouragement; it was all inside of me as far as I remember.  Probably instilled by my grandmother and aunts when I was too young to remember."

Henrietta was named for one of the aunts.  Granny's domination, as noted, didn't stop with her own children, and Granny and Gertrude together dominated Pearl, to the extent of naming her children for her.  Thus Ruby Henrietta Bundy was named Henrietta, after Henry, Granny's deceased husband, and Ruby, after her aunt Ruby Gertrude, Granny's "college educated" daughter.

Aunt Gertrude appears to have been Henrietta's most influential role model.  Granny had taken her earnings from the dairy farm and the boarding house and sent Gertrude to college, where she majored in Home Economics.  While Henrietta was a child growing up, Aunt Gertrude taught Home Economics in a town a hundred miles from Jamestown (Wayne County and lived in Goldsboro) and later was a Home Demonstration Agent in a nearby county.  Although she did not live in Jamestown, she was there frequently managing to be present as well as to have an added mystique because she did not live "at home."  Henrietta writes, "My Aunt Gertrude impressed me most—I don’t know why except that as a teacher she had money and a certain amount of glamour by living in another town in her own apartment and having her own car.  And she always gave us the best Christmas presents.  Aunt Gertrude also helped to sew our school clothes, mother couldn't sew that well."  One understands Aunt Gertrude's glamour.  She had been to college, had her "own life," and although not married and not a mother, she could do those "mother things" better even than Pearl.

 

OTHER WOMEN IN THE BUNDY/BARBER FAMILIES

Besides Granny and Aunt Gertrude, there was one other Bundy woman associated with the boarding house, Granny's daughter, Irma.  As a young child Henrietta would meet her Aunt Irma every morning before school and help her carry papers for a penny a paper.  Irma never married.  She worked in the boarding house "until Granny got too old and society's needs changed so that the boarding house wasn't needed in the community."  Then Irma worked in the public school cafeteria and later, around war time, went to Norfolk, Virginia and worked in an ice cream parlor.

There are a few other minor characters that Henrietta mentions when asked about the women in her extended family and the work they did.  Her mother Pearl, had a sister Lizzie, who lived on a nearby farm., and like Pearl_, sold butter_, eggs, milk,, and vegetables.  Pearl's sister, Dora, continued in the mill, and Pearl's brother Bill and his wife "kept welfare children."  Granny had three sisters, one of whom was also named Dora, and who also provided a "foster home" for the County Children's Services for years.  Edna, Granny's "old maid" sister, "hired out to help families — sort of as a nursemaid."  And sprinkled through both families were those women who worked in the home.  Henrietta remembers them, and notes that "they worked in the home," but as the irony of tradition would have it, they are not the family women who are emphasized when women and work is the topic.

It seems most important to observe at this point that the families Henrietta grew up exposed to were probably very typical of the semi-rural south from 1925 to 1940.  The women in Jamestown who worked did so primarily by extending in some way their home-making skills—whether by cleaning and cooking for boarders, keeping foster children, being nursemaid, or selling the products they grew, churned or canned.  Aunt Gertrude was the professional among them—and she too made her living teaching other women to do more efficiently, expertly, creatively what was already traditionally theirs to do.

 

HENRIETTA’S FAMILY INFLUENCES REINFORCED BY OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES

            Two other activities of Henrietta’s childhood and young adulthood were also typical of the small farm town of the south.  Her activities in 4-H and the church youth fellowship helped synthesize the influences from the two families.  The Barber women were church goers and Henrietta reports being "saved at about ten or twelve years old" and becoming a leader in the youth fellowship.  This was Pearl's side of the family, those who were in comparison more passive and who felt that one would be led by "a Higher Power."  This is important to bear in mind because Henrietta tends often to explain more by means of "the Higher Power" than by social or historical circumstances.  And most significantly, she was to make her vocational choice based on a minister's sermon regarding the needs of the community.

On the other hand 4-H was an expression of all she saw around her on the Bundy side of the family.  She writes "4-H was a great influence as I was a local and county officer.  The ideas of the club centered around my home life and interests."  Henrietta followed Aunt Gertrude and her father in applying her "inner drive to accomplish" in her 4-H work.  She took her traditional women's skills of sewing and canning into competition and excelled; and she was strong-minded like her Granny and developed as a leader.  4-H emphasized individual achievement, and as an acceptable way for girls to compete and achieve without really leaving their traditional role.  For Henrietta, 4-H added value and a sense of achievement to the performance of these traditional skills much as Home Economics would later.

HENRIETTA GOES TO COLLEGE

Henrietta reports that “^!as far back as I can remember I. planned to be a Home Economics teacher.^” She went through high school knowing she was headed to college and working to make the grades necessary for admittance.  Henrietta says her sister often said “I wouldn't work as hard as Henrietta does just to go to college."  Henrietta reports that she was “an exception in going to college for not many of my high school or neighbor friends went to college and of the ones that did, most of them did not finish."  But actually she had at least one good reason to anticipate going.  Granny had seen to it that her daughter Gertrude got a college education and Granny and Aunt Gertrude had then proceeded to send Granny’s grandchildren (who were Gertrude’s nieces and nephews) to college.  Otis, Jr, Henrietta's father’s son by his deceased wife, had been raised by Granny and Gertrude and was the first one to go to college.  He quit after three and a half years without graduating.  Next in line was a niece.  She "married out of necessity” six weeks before graduation and did not graduate, although her “sweetheart” did."  A third grandchild, another niece, was ready to be sent off to college but when Granny and Aunt Gertrude took her to town to buy her college clothes she confessed she had secretly married the last week of high school—which meant no college for her.  Henrietta was next, and having seen her cousins sent to college, surely anticipated assistance.  But, when the time approached, Granny and Aunt Gertrude decided "they were no longer interested in spending their money educating nieces and nephews."

Henrietta seems not to look for another explanation for this other than the obvious disappointment in the first three grandchildren.  One wonders though how much of the decision rested on the fact that Henrietta was the daughter of Otis' second wife and whether Granny and Gertrude felt they had already done enough to raise Otis., Jr., the first son, and try and get him through college.  It seems even more mysterious that Aunt Gertrude was not interested in helping her "namesake" and the niece who planned to be a Home Economics teacher—an obvious emulation of her aunt.

Henrietta was going to college anyway.  She knew her parents had lost money "through the bank" during the Depression and that her father "didn't have or wouldn’t spend the money for me to go away, so my only choice was to go as a day student to High Point College and work.  I had also wanted to be a missionary but he said I couldn’t."

Henrietta became engaged in July after she graduated from high school.  She told Junnie Thomas Hester that she had to go to college, but that if he would wait she would graduate in three years.  He agreed.  She received some help from her parents but lived at home and paid her tuition by working in a department store and in the mill.  She had started clerking in a store while still in high school, and when she started college in the fall of 1943, she writes, "I would have worked during the war even if other women had not.  Other women working probably made it easier for me to work.  The entire country was geared to back the war and men at war."  Henrietta married in December, 1945, and graduated from college in June₅ 1946. She writes, "I was the only married girl to graduate and the only one to finish in three years."

It is important to answer two questions here which give Henrietta's college experience some historical perspective.  One, what factors encouraged young women to attend college in the middle 1940’s?  Two, how had Home Economics developed as a college major?  Patricia Graham states that the most significant determinant of educational opportunity was the educational facilities available in the community where one lived.  High Point College in High Point₅ N.C, was only six miles from Jamestown, where Henrietta lived.  According to a 1950 report by The National Manpower Council, the desire of women to go to college was directly related to the education and occupation of their fathers.  0tis, Henrietta's father, had only a high school education but he had eventually owned his own dairy farm.  Henrietta gave him a lot of credit for his "hard work and inner drive."  The Manpower Council report lists five other factors which contributed to the decision to go to college in the 1940’s.  Three of them were certainly reasons Henrietta would have given.  She saw college as an essential preparation for a fruitful adult life; she saw that it was necessary for her chosen profession; and she saw a college education as a means for attaining a higher social status.

When Henrietta graduated in 1946, 56.9% of the people receiving first degrees that year were women, but these women were only 6.2% of women twenty-two years of age.2  Henrietta was therefore participating in an activity not yet common for women.  It really was not part of the traditional role for women to go to college, but if they did go, the most traditional thing to do was to train to be a teacher.  Not only did Henrietta train to teach_, but like Aunt Gertrude and in the tradition of 4-H, she would teach women how best to be prepared for their roles as women.  This is exactly what Ellen Swallow Richards had envisioned when she developed the field of "applied and domestic science" that was to become known as "Home Economics."

 

ELLEN SWALLOW RICHARDS PROFESSIONALIZES THE DOMESTIC SCIENCE OF HOME ECONOMICS

            In 1890, Ellen Swallow Richards, a chemist trained at Vassar and MIT, was disturbed by the “family ways” which characterized the economic depression near the turn of the century.  She saw that girls and boys were no longer learning the manual skills they had formerly learned in farm homes and that as the home was changing from a center of production to a center of consumption, young adults were losing a sense of control over their environment.  Richards felt that, as with other elements of education₅ the schools must now give this training no longer being received in the home.  From 1890 on, Richards worked to establish public support in Boston, where she lived, for "systematic domestic science instruction."  She established the School of Housekeeping at the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston in 1899, which later became the department of Home Economics at Simmons College.  In 1908, the American Home Economics Association was established, dedicated to “the improvement of living conditions in the home, the institutional household, and the community.”  In much the same spirit that Jane Addams was insisting that women must have the vote in order to continue to perform their proper role in a changing society, Ellen Swallow Richards felt that women must be formally trained in order to meet the many demands of their homemaking role.

            By introducing Home Economics as a college major, Richards was following the course of those individuals Mirra Komarovsky was to later refer to as “neo-anti-feminist.”  These were, by Komarovsky’s definition “people who didn’t think women are inferior but insist on the importance of the difference between them (and men) and therefore construct a college education for women based on distinctively feminine abilities, interests, functions.” 3  Lynn White was another of Komarovsky’s “neo-anti’s.”  White felt that liberal arts education for women should consist of a curriculum which emphasizes courses of study “dealing with the institution of the family and all that contributes to its well-being through food, beauty and warmth, shelter and security.” 4  White nor Richards meant for this education in the “domestic sciences” to lead to paid employment.  White went so far as to say that “to educate a woman the same as one does a man was to lay the basis for frustration in adult life.” 5

            It had been natural for Henrietta to choose to major in Home Economics.  It followed the pattern of her 4-H work; Aunt Gertrude had been her role model, and she had seen the other women in her family “economically” utilize their homemaking skills – whether in food preparation for boarders or as “surrogate” mothers for foster children.  The efficient, effective, economical management of a home involved skills one could take pride in – and Henrietta would teach this to other young women. 

 

THERE WERE NO TEACHING JOBS

Henrietta graduated from High Point College in June, 1946, and though she "had always planned to go to college to be a Home Economics teacher,” she could not find a Home Economics teaching job.  She wrote: "Once out of college my work was influenced by three things: one, my husband going into the army and overseas; two, not having a car to travel to a job; and three, no opening in my field—-in Home Economics teachers had to die for an opening to occur."  She was offered a job to teach eighth grade, and though she was really not prepared to teach the material she told them she would take it—but only with the understanding that if she got the chance she would be moving to be with her husband who had been drafted in May, 1946.  The job offer was withdrawn.  At this juncture, with her childhood goal not a viable option, Henrietta just waited and clerked in a store.  Her husband was shipped overseas, and she moved to a room at the YWCA.  Finally a friend who had graduated with her in Home Economics called her and asked if she wanted a job the friend was leaving, as Assistant Dietician at Wesley Long Hospital making $125.00 a month.  She took the job and a year later the friend called again, and again the friend offered her the job she was vacating.  Henrietta became Head Dietician at Greensboro Senior High School, the only high school in town.  But within a year₅ Henrietta was bored, and there was no opportunity for advancement.  The only higher position in town for a dietician was as Head Dietician over all the public schools in Greensboro, and it seemed unlikely that the job would be vacant anytime soon. (The woman who held the job then, in 1948, is still in, it today. Luckily, Henrietta did not opt to wait.)

Henrietta’s husband returned from the army in 1947, but Henrietta never thought of not working.  After all she had a "drive to accomplish."  She writes that "when I decided to marry him I knew he probably would never earn a high income but I chose him because he was a good man.  His goodness was more important than money and I would help him earn the money and I did."  In November 1948, Henrietta who had a "drive to accomplish" and was bored with her dietician job was sitting in church.  She writes, "The minister brought out in his sermon that our community needed a kindergarten and later a nursery school and I sat in church and made the decision that I could do that."