Boola Boola

 

From Boola Boola To Legendary Teacher

 

Little did we know.

To those of us in her Language Arts class, she was simply Miss Riley, the formidable eighth grade teacher at Ross N. Robinson Junior High School.

She was always dressed to the nines, not a hair out of place, lipstick perfectly applied.

She wasn’t a mean teacher. She wasn’t a whipping teacher or even a yelling teacher.

She was an encouraging teacher, praising those who deserved her praise, never disparaging lesser work except with a lesser grade.

Sixty years later I still think she and Miss Spracher and Miss Snyder were the most influential English teachers I had in my twelve years in the Kingsport Public School system. And all three were fixtures in junior high.

But Miss Riley towered over all of them by force of personality. It was not for nothing that her college class elected her Most Prominent. Any room she ever entered, she was immediately the Most Prominent.

Oh, but what we didn’t know about her.

 

The Boola-Boola Girl

Mary Erin Riley, Miss Riley’s full name, was a four-year (!!!!) cheerleader at Alabama College for Women at Montavello, leading the other cheerleaders in such boola-boola era cheers as:

Ala-ga-zip!!!

Ala-ga-zo!!!

Ala-ga-zip-zam-zo!!!

Hit ‘em high, hit ‘em low,

Yea, Montavello, let’s go!!!

 

No, Montavello didn’t have a football team to hit ‘em high and low. It was a women’s college. So she cheered for the Purples and Golds, as they were called, to hit ‘em on the basketball court.

The school also had a field hockey team, a swim team and a tennis team but basketball was the number one spectator sport at Montavello in the early twenties.

My other favorite of her cheers:

Radiator, radiator, steam, steam, steam!

Mule and wagon, mule and wagon, team, team, team!

Montavello!

 

The Hubba Hubba Girl

Most Prominent was probably the most apt title the women of Montavello could come up with for their Mary Erin Riley. She is in a couple of dozen pictures in the yearbooks of her four years at the school - she graduated in 1926 - and she jumps off the page in every photo.

The Glee Club is packed and ready for a trip to Charleston, S.C. in one photo. And there she is, a stand out. In the cheerleader photo, the yearbook editors didn’t bother to hide her. They gave her an individual photo.

Her senior portrait said it all:

Mary Erin — those two words immediately bring a mental image to “ye scores of acquaintances” of all that one could tell in a volume. Wit - a made to order type to which is added a brand of Mary’s mirth. Striking? I should say. Sincerity? Enough to lavish it on all her friends, which are greater in numbers than the "Charleston" delegation! Ability? Scan her honors, then rub your eyes and read slowly. Charming? Could anything short of such result from the combination known as Mary Erin?

I didn’t know her as Mary Erin. But I wish I had.

 

The Girl with the Golden Voice

At Montavello she was in the Literary Society and the YWCA and on the yearbook staff and served as a class officer but music was obviously her true love. She was in the Glee Club all four years, presaging her arrival in Kingsport eight years later, where she became a much in demand vocalist. Newspaper clippings from the time note her appearances before civic organizations, church groups and conventions. In 1935 alone – her first full year in Kingsport – she sang for 42 different groups, including the Rotary Club, the Franklin Club, whatever that was, the Boys Scouts of America Jamboree and as a soloist at First Baptist church.

For the Boy Scout Jamboree of 1935 she sang “Aspirations” and “Give a Man a Horse He Can Ride.” The Kingsport Times noted, “Miss Riley's full rich voice was heard to great advantage in these numbers and she received much applause.”

She also began the first of what would become an annual event, her much anticipated performance at the Kiwanis Kapers.

By 1937 the newspaper was breathlessly reporting, “Yes, Mary Riley will sing for the Kiwanis Kapers this year. Naturally. The Chairman, the Casting Director, and the President of the Kiwanis club, all told this reporter that this announcement could safely he made. Mary Erin was up at Kapers rehearsal last night and the song was decided on. So watch for the Spotlight and Mary.”

By 1940 the Kapers critic wrote, “Oh boy-wait till you see Mary Riley. You have seen her? Yes, but not this Mary. Mary who always sweeps regally out to the foot lights in one of them there gorgeous slinky things-full of dignity and music. Well-Mary's dignity is Gone With The Wind, and we have Mary as a hill billy-or should I say a hillnanny (hope this does not- get Mary's goat), Mary doing a rousing square dance, Mary handing you a hot number, so hot it shoots sparks. This will wow you.”

She was literally the belle of the ball in early Kingsport.

But then there was this….

 

The Legendary Teacher

Mary Erin Riley arrived in Kingsport in 1934, following in her older sister Augusta’s footsteps and signing on with the Kingsport City Schools to teach Reading and English to high schoolers and junior high students. She quickly settled into teaching eighth grade Language Arts. Miss Riley taught generations of students, retiring after the 1970 school year.

If you were in her class – and I was during the 1960-1961 school year – you never forgot her.

The thing I remember most is her kindness. This was an era when not all teachers possessed that trait.

The World Series in 1960 was an afternoon affair. If you were lucky, and the game ran long or into extra innings, you might be able to race home and catch the last couple of batters on TV.

On the day of Game 7 between the Yankees and the Pirates, Tom McNeer smuggled a transistor radio into class. He ran an earphone cord up his sleeve and he would rest his head on his hand, covering the fact that he was actually listening to the game. He would turn around periodically and whisper updates to those of us who hung on every Yankee at-bat. I still remember Tom whispering that the Pirates had taken a two-run lead in the bottom of the eighth. Oh no. Then came the news that the Yankees had tied the game in the top of the ninth. Hurrah! A silent hurrah.

That’s when the earplug slipped out of Tom’s sleeve and rolled to the front of the room, where Miss Riley was talking about Evangeline and her forest primeval. It settled at her feet and the Yankees fan section fell silent. Miss Riley looked down and knew what it was. She could have punished our entire section. But she didn’t. As Tom quickly grabbed up the earplug, she said, “That won’t happen again, will it?”

He shook his head no and class continued.

She could have punished Tom. She could have punished us all. But she understood. 

Miss Riley retired a decade later, when she turned 65, and settled into retirement in a house at 1534 Waverly Road. She had lived for many years at the Kingsport Inn, until it was razed in the spring of 1960, and she moved in with her sister Augusta Tice on Watauga.

Miss Riley never married. This was in the era when school superintendent Ross N. Robinson forbid his women teachers from marrying or else they would lose their jobs.

Her sister Augusta had resigned as Music Director of Kingsport city schools to marry insurance man Henry Tice.

But Mary Erin was married to her students.

She died on May 9, 1976. Her modest obituary couldn’t begin to tell the story of her rich life.

I wish I had known all this about her when I was in her Language Arts class.