Another Kingsport Teacher Enters the Eternal Classroom

 

Margaret Melton in college

Miss Melton and I arrived at Ross N. Robinson Junior High at the same time. I was a newly-minted seventh grader and she was a newly-minted English teacher, fresh out of Berea College and joining an already formidable English Department at RNRJHS that included the legendary She Who Must Be Obeyed Of RNRJHS, Mary Erin Riley, the kind-hearted Sara Spracher and a dozen other Kingsport school system legends and future legends like Gerry McCammon.

I was never assigned to Miss Melton’s class during my three years but I got to know her later after I moved back to Kingsport.

She was a wonderful person with a delightfully dry sense of humor.

Miss Melton – Eunice Margaret Melton Tunnell - died earlier this week.

At a teacher’s reunion in 2004 I told her my most memorable story about English class at RNR and she responded with a story that was even better.

In ninth grade I was assigned to the lovely and versatile Miss Snyder, who taught both English and Spanish.

Right before spring break that year Miss Snyder finished up our unit on Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations.”

That Friday morning is indelibly etched in my mind. I hopped out of my dad’s car and was walking toward Robinson’s front door when I noticed several of my classmates carrying boxes and lugging other heavy objects.

Oh, I thought, they are carrying in their “Great Expectations” projects.

And that’s when it hit me.

Are our “Great Expectations” projects due today?

Suddenly my stomach started doing cartwheels.

I thought they were due…well, I didn’t know when I thought they were due.

Now I knew. They were due today. It was a nightmare come true.

I had two choices:

I could go to the office and tell our principal Mr. Webb the truth, that I felt nauseous and he would need to call my father to come and get me.

Or I could hurriedly create a project.

I didn’t have English until seventh period. I had a study hall and health class – which was like study hall with a teacher – before English.

I thought maybe I could pull off creating a project out of thin air. Plus I knew if necessary I could always get “sick” during sixth period.

There was no way I could bake a cake or sew a wedding dress or papier-mâché a diorama in study hall.

So I did the only thing I could do in a study hall period. I wrote a new ending for “Great Expectations.”

Dickens had never been satisfied with the original ending to his story and on the advice of a friend he had written a second more upbeat ending. I knew this because Miss Snyder had told us.

I would write a third ending! It was the easiest solution. It was the only solution.

I turned it in and forgot all about it over spring break but when I sat down in my seat the first day back, I suddenly remembered it. I suddenly remembered because I saw that Miss Snyder had my paper in her hand.

Oh, crap.

She began to review the projects situated around the room, the cakes and costumes, the models and the miniatures. And then she came to mine.

I knew she had figured me out. I was ready for my figurative flogging. Then I heard words like “creative” and “unique” and…and I wondered who she was talking about.

That’s when she told the class she had given me an A plus.

I tried to accept my accolades with humility. Because, believe me, I knew the truth and I knew I should be humble. I had plenty to be humble about. But…I had pulled it off.

You may think that the lesson here is that necessity is the mother of invention. Or when the going gets tough the tough get going. Or something equally as clichéd.

The real lesson is that there is such a thing as luck.

 

When I finished telling Miss Melton that story, she laughed out loud.

And then she began to tell me a story about her first year teaching at Robinson.

“It was the end of the school year and one afternoon Mr. Webb came into my room. That was not something he normally did, so I was on high alert.”

She said he told her he would be back Monday to look at her lesson plans from the year.

She said there was suddenly a queasy feeling in her stomach. “I thought, what lesson plans? Was I supposed to have been doing lesson plans?”

But like that 14-year-old boy in Miss Snyder’s English class, she didn’t panic. She pondered.

“I went home and spent the entire weekend writing lesson plans for the past year. On Monday Mr. Webb came in and I dug them out of my desk drawer, as if they had been sitting in there all year, and handed them to him. He thumbed through, reading a few pages and moving on to the next notebook. Finally he got up and started out the door. ‘Those are excellent,’ he said. ‘I look forward to working with you next year.’”

She taught at Robinson for the next 30 years.

 

Rest in peace, Miss Melton.

(She married Truman Tunnell in 1975 so the name on her obituary is Eunice Margaret Melton Tunnell. She was 83.)

 

 

Remembering other teachers

Here is a list of all the teachers in the Kingsport school system for the school year 1962-1963. (Click to enlarge.)

I remember so many of them. Most of them fondly….

 

 

 RNR Teachers in 1962

Here is a photo of the 1962 Ross N. Robinson Junior High School faculty. (My eighth grade math teacher Jim Scott gave this to me about 20 years ago. Gerry McCammon Frazier helped me with the names.)

 

Row 1(l to r)

Tommy Hill, Hazel Stewart, Johnnie Wray, Rowena Johnson, Maude Dishner, Mildred Kozsuch, Lucille Massengill, Shirley Garrett, Don Stevens, Delbert Webb (principal).

 

Row 2

Jack Campbell, Nancy Randall, Sarah Gouge (McKee), Gerry McCammon (Frazier), Margaret Melton (Tunnell), Wanda Bledsoe, Lorena Hoover, Hope King.

 

Row 3

Oscar Dalton, Nell McLean, Bea Gilbert, Sarah Spracher, Mary Tuggle, Faye Neergaard, Madeline Thomas, Ruth Sauer, Mary Riley, Wilma Snyder (Bunting), Dolly Wallen(behind Mr. Webb).

 

Row 4

Reba Robinette, Jim Scott, Jo Ann Emmert, Sam Hicks, Charles Flanary, Bob Shepherd, Don Little, David Wise.