204. Coach Callan Hung, Maora McCoy, Jackie (Gaylor) Anderson, Lucille Stocksdale Retires,

RCHS Blog Post Number 204. 

Coach Callan Hung, Maora McCoy, Jackie (Gaylor) Anderson, Lucille Stocksdale Retires

Driver High School Basketball 

February 15, 1960.

  Driver high school basketball coach Don Callan was hung in effigy Sunday night.

  A scarecrow type object, with a sign carrying the name "Don Callan," was hanging high in a tree in front of the high school building on East South street when classes began around 8 o'clock Monday morning. A few minutes later the "dummy" was removed by school officials.

  A photograph, under exposed with a Polaroid type camera, was received by Jerry DAVIS, News and Journal-Herald reporter, in Monday's mail. The letter had been postmarked "12:30 a.m. Monday."

  On the back was written:

  "Jerry Davis, please put in paper. Coach Don Callan was hung in effigy."

  Callan, in his second year at the Winchester school, started the current season with an inexperienced and under-sized group of players. He faced the job of molding players from two schools, the merged White River and Winchester systems, into an unprejudiced playing unit.

  The team had a 7-3 record through it's first 10 games, including surprising victories over Yorktown, Portland and Dunkirk. But since the Dunkirk game the team has lost seven consecutive games for a current 7-10 record and tempers have grown increasingly shorter.

  The school concludes its regular basketball schedule at home this Friday night against Decatur.

  Monday afternoon an unidentified person in the high school system reported that the "stunt" of either players, students or adult fans had possibly backfired. It was reported that following the incident there appeared to be an increased wave of sentiment and support for the young varsity basketball coach.  

(Mick asks: Bob, Dale, Ed, where were you Sunday night?)

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Jackie Gaylor

Winchester Journal-Herald newspaper.

January 24, 1952.

  A Winchester lass will appear with the Hines theater-Portland Lions club midnight minstrel show to be presented at the Hines in Portland Friday and Saturday of this week. She is Miss Jackie Sue Gaylor, who, says the Portland Sun, "won the hearts of the audience last year with her smile." Jackie will appear again with several songs.

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McCoy's Grocery

September, 1947

  McCoy's grocery at the corner of Short and Union streets has been a familiar landmark to residents in the northeastern part of the city for the past ten years.

  The store was opened by Mrs. Maora McCoy in November of 1937, making the second time she had been in the grocery business in that same location. She and her husband, Clyde J., operated a store there for several years prior to 1931.

  The store offers its patrons the tops in quality foods and meats, specializing in Stokely canned goods and Kuhner, Armour and Hughes-Curry meats.

  Assisting Mrs. McCoy in the store is her brother Roy "Sonny" McKIBBON, and her mother Mrs. Anna McKibbon.

  Mrs. McCoy is a native of Louisville, Ky., but has been a resident of Winchester for several years, having moved here more than twenty-three years ago. She is very active in the Parent-Teachers association, the Business and Professional Women's club and the Chamber of Commerce.

  Mrs. McCoy and her three children, Rex, 13 years old, Emma Lee, 11, and Elanor, 10, live in a house adjoining the store.

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Mrs. Stocksdale retires

May 19, 1965

By: Anna Marie Gibbons

  "It's about time I retired," Lucille Stocksdale observed recently. "My language is out of date. I tell the children to put something on the victrola, and they say 'Whaaat?' All they know is 'record player.' At Baker school (a new building) I talk about 'blackboard' and they say 'Whaaat?' They're 'chalkboards' now -and at Baker they're green, not black."

  Mrs. Stocksdale was referring, in an offhand manner and with her usual brisk cheerfulness, to the fact that she has decided to retire after 45 years of teaching. Since 1960 she has taught music to Winchester elementary students. The decision to retire, she explains, was made so that she can spend the winters with her husband, Charles Stocksdale, in Florida. The couple plan to buy a house and enjoy the warm climate from December through early spring.

  In her 45 years of teaching, Mrs. Stocksdale has put hundreds of youngsters through an intensive, positive course in music and art. The art part of her assignment she abandoned reluctantly some five years ago when, at the request of Winchester-White River School Superintendent Merritt Beck, she took on the job of teaching the primary students in the three Winchester schools the basics of music, in 1960. Up to then, Mrs. Stocksdale had taught the Winchester 7th graders art and music.

  Because Willard school, the oldest school, except Driver, in the system, was where Lucille Reynard began her teaching career at the age of 18, we chose this building for the background against which to write her story.

  This writer, as well as many, many other persons now parents of grown children, or grandparents of near-school-age children, remember "Miss Lucille" associating her with a variety of topics which may come up in a discussion of schooldays. One World War ll veteran, reminded of his former teacher, looked dreamily out the window and muttered "Distant trees." For initiates, this was a perfectly understandable reference. In her days as an art teacher of the 6th and 7th graders of Winchester, Miss Lucille" was adept at quick water-color landscapes, and easily taught all but the extremely inept the art of painting in lines of "distant trees" as a background for a watercolor. "She taught us to copy," a 20 year old former student recalled recently. "That's one of the basic things you need to learn about art."

  As for music, which has taken up all the teacher's time since 1960, her earlier students remember (with various reactions, depending on their musical aptitude) her music appreciation courses. These included, in the earlier years, listening to Conductor Walter Damrosch's radio broadcasts of classics. They included classical records on that "victrola" and most of us who were seventh graders in those years react instantly to "Turkish March." In The Halls of the Mountain King," Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" and Danse Macabre."

  Although Mrs. Stocksdale has much less time for music appreciation courses now, she is still teaching her upper-graders to sing parts-an accomplishment that comes to some easily and with pleasure, to others doubtfully and slowly, but that adds that much more to the store of abilities which make life enjoyable.

  The music appreciation has not been entirely dropped, however. When she has time, Mrs. Stocksdale says, she plays a record or two, perhaps a classical composer such as McDowell, or Dance Macabre for Halloween. She also firmly acquaints her students with Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" for Christmas. "They just have to know that," she comments firmly.

  In general, however, her last five years of teaching have been taken up with instructing the first six grades in sight reading. The fact that she has covered so much territory-three schools- and done it so successfully, with so many grades, is commentary enough on her spirit, intensity, dedication and ability. Until she took over the project, sight reading was not understood by or taught to the lower grade pupils.

  "Miss Lucille" Reynard started teaching at the age of 18 at Willard first grade after only 12 weeks of summer school at Ball State: each summer following she took additional training, and after the first year taught art and music to all the sixth and seventh graders in the Winchester system. In 1932 she requested a year's leave, of the late Oscar Baker, then superintendent of schools, and completed a full year's training at Ball State, then returned to Willard.

  "Miss Lucille" was married in 1945 to Charles Stocksdale, a retired farmer, but continued teaching as usual. However, now, she says she feels she owes it to her husband to join him for his Florida winters. The couple plan to buy a home in Bradenton, and spend a good part of each year there.

  Because she is still full of interest and energy, Mrs. Stocksdale also plans to substitute, as a teacher when positions are available, both in Florida and Indiana.

  As for her retirement after such a long, useful and vigorous career first in the Winchester, then White River, then Randolph Central school systems, Mrs. Stocksdale admits it's a little overwhelming. "After all-45 years..." she remarks wistfully. Her former pupils will undoubtedly feel the same-it seems impossible that she won't be back, to instruct their children...But certainly many, many of her former students will always remember her. Those with musical backgrounds may remember her as giving them a needed push and understanding...those with little other source of music information may remember her as giving them something they would otherwise never have known.

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