Academic Stars of the 30s

 

In 1935 and 1936 the Kingsport Times published a weekly – or almost weekly – page called “D.B.H.S. Highlights.” It was the equivalent of the school newspaper with a rotating cast of editors and writers.

Many future famous names made appearances on the masthead of that weekly news page, from future surgeon Shelton Reed to future photographer Tommy McNeer. (Miss Ruth Ramer was the faculty advisor.)

I was taken by a column in the Kingsport Times of Nov. 10, 1935 titled ODDS AND ENDS by Eckel Fuller.

Fuller would go on to graduate from Teachers’ College, as ETSU was called then, serve in World War II, obtain a Masters from ETSU and go on to teach Tennessee History at Sevier. He retired in 1978. (His wife Juanita Fuller was my Trigonometry teacher at D-B.)

But in 1935 Eckel was a junior at D-B when he penned this column:

 

Approximately 19.4 per cent of last year's graduates went to college.

The highest grade ever made for a four year's average at D. B. H. S. was made by Elaine Neufer with an average of 95.9. Sam Williams holds second place with a grade of 95.3. The former student graduated in 1933 and the latter in 1935.

There were 97 more students enrolled at the end of the first month this year than there were at the end of the first month last year.

Robert Shetterley holds the record of having earned the greatest number of K's for one year. He received six K's in the year 1931-32.

This school was the first one to give recognition to the various activities in school by letters.

This was begun in 1930.

 

 

I wanted to know what happened to these academic stars.

My first thought about Bob Shetterley winning 6 letters was football, basketball, baseball, track and what else?

Not even close.

In May 1932 Shetterley was awarded K’s for basketball, academics, dramatics, debate, band and orchestra.

Robert Shetterley’s father, Dr. Fred F. Shetterley, came to Kingsport in 1920 to run the new Corning Glass Works. (The family lived in the White City.) He was transferred back to Corning, New York in 1931 but Robert stayed on through graduation. He then rejoined his family in New York. In 1936 he graduated from the University of Rochester with a degree in English literature. He immediately started with Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati and stayed with the company for his entire career. He began in the advertising department before becoming manager of the Food Productions Division. At one time he headed P&G’s Clorox division. He retired from Clorox in 1982 as chairman of the board. He died in 1997 in Cincinnati. (His son, also named Robert, is a portraitist known for his series painted after 9/11 and called “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” It was turned into a juvenile book in 2006.)

The family last name is spelled both Shetterley and Shetterly.  

 

 

Sam W. Williams, the fellow with the second highest academic average, went to Berea College after graduating as valedictorian of the class of ‘35. He spent his entire career as an auditor at Kingsport’s First National Bank. (Hugh Kyle Still, D-B ’64, was his nephew.)

 

 

Elaine Neufer, who graduated from D-B in 1933 (as valedictorian, of course), went to Tusculum where in 1935 she won the Lillie Fowler Lovette Memorial Prize ($25) for her essay on “Woman’s Position in East Tennessee as Affected by the Tennessee Valley Development.” She told the Kingsport Times that she was active in Tusculum’s Creative Writing Club and intended to pursue a career in writing.

Did Elaine Neufer become a writer?

The Times News answered that question in a 1965 feature story titled: "I Only Wish Elaine Could Have Known”

The unbylined story:

 Genius, according to an old adage, is seldom recognized in the living.

During much of her lifetime, from about the age of 14 until she died at 43 in 1961, Miss Elaine Neufer wrote poetry. None of it was ever published, with one exception. One short poem was published in a magazine of the Episcopal Church.

After Miss Neufer's death, her high school Latin teacher, Miss Grace Elmore, and Miss Neufer's niece, who works for a printing firm, decided to surprise her mother.

Miss Elmore still had a poem Elaine had written as a term project when she was 14.

The niece took the poem to have a dozen copies made as a Christmas present for Mrs. Neufer.

Miss Elmore kept two copies of the booklet.

Last year, Dr. Austin Lashbrook, head of the classical department at the University of Kansas was married. As part of her wedding gift, Miss Elmore sent one of the booklets.

Dr. Lashbrook, one of the editors of the Classical Journal, the publication written by college and university professors, wrote a letter to Miss Elmore telling her Elaine's classical poem would be published in the January issue of the magazine.

"I couldn't have had a better Christmas present,” Miss Elmore said. "I had wanted Elaine to publish it for a number of years, but somehow it never happened during her lifetime. I only wish she could have known.”

The poem, "The Love of Dido and Aeneas," shows a wisdom far beyond her 14 years.

A small portion reads:

Oh, Virgil, it was thine to paint the strife,

The agony, the weary leaden toil,

The hurt, the grief, the lonely bitter tears

On which the Roman state upreared its bulk,

Proud ruler, haughty mistress of the world,

Its solid walls built on its patriot dead.

Great Virgil, thou didst know the way to fame,

Though all that way were marked by weary death.

The publishers of the Classical Journal said in a note to Elaine's mother, Mrs. Dena O. Neufer, “The poem is a remarkable accomplishment and a beautiful monument to Elaine's understanding and imagination.”

"Elaine's dream from the time she entered Dobyns-Bennett, shortly after we came to Kingsport was to be a writer," Mrs. Neufer said.

But when she entered college, she became discouraged. After two years she quit college to go to work at Eastman, where she became a senior chemist.

In 1960 she guest wrote a book review for the Times-News on "Oedipus and Akhnaton, Myth and History," by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky.

After the review appeared, the author wrote Elaine telling her she had written the best review on his book he had seen.

"She read everything she could find about (humanitarian) Dr. Tom Dooley after she discovered she, too, had malignant melanoma," Mrs. Neufer said.

After her death, a friend made a tape recording of her brother reading Elaine's one published poem, "The Maget," for her mother.

"It's really a devotional record," she said. "He read a prayer, and then the 23rd Psalm, and then the poem. People who have heard it have been deeply impressed.”

The poem begins:

As the needle turns to the north,

As the plant turns to the sun,

I turn to Thee.

As the tree lifts it branches,

As the flame burns upward,

I aspire unto Thee.

It ends as the story of Elaine Neufer must end:

In this is all said that can be said.

The heart falls silent ---

And the silence forever and ever is singing, singing.