A Country Store: Henry A. Wilgus and the Rural Schools

            It felt freezing, below zero.  Henry Wilgus and his two kids May, eight and Bill, seven arrived at the little one-room school at nine AM.  The school was across the street from the High Woods Reformed Church.  The building still stands there today.  Henry arrived to find there was no fire in the stove.  Other little children were huddled together in the cold.  It would be some time before the room could heat up enough for lessons to begin.

            Starting a wood fire can be a dusty business, so the windows stood open while the teacher and an older student tended to the fire. This was the moment that galvanized Henry’s resolve to make rural education better for his and all the children in the community.  It was 1924, and Henry had been living in High Woods for five years. He was twenty-nine.

He was the owner of a small store and gas station and was in the process of adding a restaurant area with a dance floor.  His house had indoor plumbing, and was  properly wired even though electricity was not immediately available in High Woods..  Henry loved the country, but he had urban ideas about plumbing and a definite vision of sound education for his children.  This made him a city slicker, an outsider whose ideas were not worth “a row of pins.”

He bristled at being labeled an outsider.  He said his family had been in America for three hundred years on his father’s side and ninety years on his mother’s side, so he was not an outsider to American ideas.  Those who did not stand for good education were the outsiders in his mind.

            During his long struggle to improve education in the area, he wrote many letters and was often quoted in the paper.  His own words tell the story.

My own education was limited by the death of my father, leaving six children for our mother to raise.  This is why I have taken an interest in school matters and no one can alter my determination to do all I can for the children.

     He made up for his abbreviated formal education by being an avid reader.  He also studied mechanical drawing on his own and became certified as a mechanic.  He had the talent of quick scrutiny, so it was not a challenge for him to conclude that rural kids were being shortchanged by having to study in an unsuitable building. 

     Thus began his effort to build a new school in High Woods.  The new building would enhance and improve the community, and keep the local school from being swallowed up by the oncoming movement towards consolidation.  There was a chance that other bordering small communities such as Veteran and Daisy might join them to keep the elementary school close to the vicinity.

The fact that the children are required to attend school…requires that we should provide the agencies essential to the development of healthy, vigorous bodies, refined cultivated minds, good habits and morals.  Examine our school library.  There hasn’t been any money spent on library books in a good many years.

I wonder how far back one would have to go to find a high school graduate who received their schooling in this building. (June 28, 1927) 

Henry lost this battle when the vote tallied 22 for the new building, 29 against. However, He was not done.  Next, he began and, this time, won the battle for bus transportation for High Woods kids to attend high school.  Prior to this, few if any were able to go because their families were responsible for transporting them.  For some, a high school education meant living in a boarding house during the week, an expense not many country families could afford.  Because of his success, neighboring communities such as Blue Mountain, asked him for help in securing bus transportation to Saugerties High School for their children.  

There may be setbacks, but the American boy or girl raised in the rural sections is not going to be deprived of an opportunity of going to high school.  For a high school education is essential today, and is readily provided for the village and city child.

We have a hard battle.  Economy is the sign of the times.  Perhaps they will even try to do away with fire engines because there are no fires to put out, just as some folks don’t think it is necessary to educate children because there are no jobs for them.    (April 10, 1933)

            At one point, Henry received a threatening anonymous letter, and one signed rant from the Board of the Blue Mountain School insisting that he take back his statements, or there would be dire unspecified consequences.  This letter appeared in the paper to support Henry.  Its author is unknown because, oddly enough, the paper allowed it to be signed “anonymous”.

Anyone who knows Henry Wilgus is dead sure that no insinuation about lawsuits will frighten him.  He is an old fashioned battler in rural school matters, and he takes nothing from anyone, and those who think they can scare him have barked up the wrong tree.

Unknown, unknown, Shirley Van Bramer and May Wilgus, Unknown

 May Wilgus age 90 in front of the old High Woods School with her grandson Michael Stern

A Country Store. Henry A. Wilgus during WW II.

            According to family fable, Henry tried to join the Navy by using his younger brother’s birth certificate.  When that did not succeed, he joined the Merchant Marine.  Here is a wonderful picture of his farewell party at the High Woods Store.  His second wife, Ethel, is there, as is his daughter May.  Everyone looks happy.  Henry is cutting the cake. 

                        Flowers from the garden,  sandwiches on white "Bond"bread

            Pictures don’t always show everything.  For example, Henry and his second wife were on the road to divorce.  Ethel and May were never friends.  Even in later years, May would shrug her shoulders and change the subject when Ethel was mentioned.  However, it does show a happy looking Henry on his was to help the war effort.  He was a very patriotic man. In later years, he erected a large billboard across from his store listing the names of the people from High Woods who had served in the war.

            At the age of fifty, height of five feet six inches and weight of one hundred sixty pounds, he was about to report for duty on the Liberty Ship SS Henry M. Robert (named after the man who invented Robert’s rules Of Order).  He shipped out of New York City, went through the Panama Canal to Seattle then to the pacific theater.  His route included Hollandia (part of the invasion of New Guinea), Linguyan Gulf (part of the invasion of the Philippines) and, of course, Manila.  He mustered out in Seattle.  He had been part of the gun crew for the ship’s 5" anti aircraft gun.  The roar of the gun permanently damaged his hearing.

            Henry became a Shellback [i] when he crossed the equator. The Shellback status is common in the Navy, Marines and Merchant Marine, and it comes with a good degree of hazing and a ceremony of humiliation that involves being hit in the face with a handful of mustard by “King Neptune.” The initiated are called “sons of Neptune” while the uninitiated are “slimy pollywogs.”  Henry would occasionally ask us “are you a pollywog?”, but we had no thought of the reference.

            Like many WWII veterans, he did not speak of his experiences at length.  Over the years, we, as grandchildren, noticed his anchor tattoo and gleaned some stories and gems of wisdom.  The first gem was Henry’s belief that apple pectin is the cure for cancer.  He said one of his shipmates had a large brown cancer spot cured with applications of apple pectin.  The second gem was using turtles as food.  In later years, Henry would on occasion catch and prepare snapping turtles.

            He often included stories to be told to his grandchildren in his letters home.

            At Sea.  Pacific.  1945.  Tell Plunku[ii]s I was watching the flying fish today.  There are lots of them where we are just now.  Some have pink wings, some blue.  They can fly until their wings get dry.  Then, they dive in the sea.

January 16, 1945.  Now you can tell Plunkus a real fish story. Was in swimming twice last Sat. and the ocean in nice and warm.  Sun morning, saw a shark 10-foot long swim the whole length of the ship and around the bow then head off for another ship at anchor.  He sure was looking for a meal.  Tell Plunkus he and his sister would hardly be a mouthful for him, so he’d better grow big.

            Never a smoker, he traded his cigarette ration for saki ashore in the Philippines and hid it in the shaft alley beneath the floor grating.  As an engineer, he had access to the passage that ran from the engine to the propeller. It was a very close space and made Henry feel somewhat claustrophobic, but it was an ideal place to stow secret things, and he was there often since the engine shaft needed regular checking.  He used the saki for other trades or drank it himself.

            He also told us the story of a man who worked in the engine room and would, during his daily routine,  blindfold himself, spin around and find his way out in preparation for a deadly attack that might sink the ship.  When the attack finally came, he found his way in the dark up the ladder that climbs to the top of the stack. As the boat was sinking and the lifeboats were pulling off, "he popped up out of the stack.” The lifeboats pulled close through the dangerous back wash of the sinking ship to pick him up and save his life. It could be a merchant mariner’s myth, but it is a great story.

            Henry told of having a close call when, while in port, a Kamikaze dove into the forward hatch of the ship next in the line while it was in the process of disembarking troops.  There were many casualties.  Henry wrote, “This is another world out here and one can’t think in terms of things back there.” 

In later years, on Memorial Day, Henry would shed tears at the raising of the flag and gun salute.  As a young person, it made me marvel to see my grandfather with tears in his eyes.  Years later, at the Viet Nam memorial in D.C., while looking at a college classmate’s name, I remembered Grandpa removing his glasses and wiping his eyes.

After the Memorial Day parade, and when the spirit moved him, he would set off a stick of dynamite behind the store in High Woods. Then, there would be pitchers of beer all around, good conversation, food and dancing.  Memorial Day is, after all, the beginning of summer.

           

           

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[i] The ceremony of Crossing the Line is an initiation rite in the Royal Navy, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, and other navies that commemorates a sailor's first crossing of the Equator. [1] Originally, the tradition was created as a test for seasoned sailors to ensure their new shipmates were capable of handling long rough times at sea. Sailors who have already crossed the Equator are nicknamed (Trusty) Shellbacks, often referred to as Sons of Neptune; those who have not are nicknamed (Slimy) Pollywogs.

As you knelt before the Judge in King Neptune's Court, you were ordered to kiss the Royal Baby. He was the ugliest guy on the ship. A bucket of mustard was hidden behind him and when you went to kiss him, he reached back to the bucket and hit you with a handful of mustard. The royal barber was next. He had electric clippers that kept shocking you as he cut your hair. After that came the 'Royal Bath.' You had to say Shellback three times as they were dunking you.

Running the gauntlet was the final stage of the exercise. A tarp was spread out on deck and greased with graphite, over it about a foot was strung a cargo net. You had to crawl along the tarp for about ten yards with Shellbacks paddling you and another at the end with a fire hose to drive you back just when you thought you were through. When it was all over you could take a deep breath and with great pride say: Now I am a Shellback. from:"DESANews, Vol 26/Num 5:

Pollywog To Shellback

by John Muldowney

USS J. R. Y. Blakely DE 140

[ii] Norman Towar Boggs III.  His nickname was Plunkus.