These Are My People, This Is My Home

These Are My People, This Is My Home by Otto Fields Introduction There are two universal themes in Otto Field's life. One is that you can go home again. The other is that school consolidation in Appalachia isn't always goodfor children. Born on December 31, 1933, to Tim and Omia (Vaughn) Fields, Otto was raised in Jackson County, Kentucky, with six brothers and one sister. He left Kentucky in 1950 to work in Hamilton, Ohio. During the next 32 years he worked for the Wright-Bernet, Inc., Brush Factory, organized the factory union, served as both a local and national union officer , married and reared three daughters, Patricia, Carolyn and Kay. But like many mountain people who go north for jobs, Otto wanted to return to his roots. In 1980 he married Lucy Hacker, and two years later they returned to Jackson County to the farm where Otto was raised. Today Otto and Lucy have a four-year-old daughter, Vanessa. Both are active on the Appalachian Communities for Children board and assist with GED classes in Jackson County. Otto is currently building a house on his parents' home place. The story of Otto 's education came to my attention in the spring of 1985 when he and Lucy became my students in the English 100 class that Berea College offered in Jackson County. Otto's writing immediately caught my attention. I began looking forward to his essays and journal entries, many of which related the story of his schooling as a child. I learned that in 1941 he began school at Bond Elementary School where he went from primary to seventh grade in three and a half years. In June, 1945, he completed eighth grade through an exam and enrolled at Annville Institute, three miles from his home on Moore's Creek. Learning was an exciting enterprise at Annville, which had been established by the Reformed Church of America. But that excitement was lost when Otto began attending the consolidated high school at Tyner the following year. The long bus ride, the relatively bare library, and boredom served to bring hisformal education to an end at age 13. He eventually finished high school in 1960 through correspondence and night school in Ohio. The following excerpts from his journals give a vivid account of getting educated in Appalachia. —Sandra Brenneman Oldendorf 45 I am prejudiced in favor of small, multigraded schools over large consolidated schools, due mainly to the pleasant experiences I had while attending a small school in the early 1940s. It was a two-room school with two teachers (and no aides), who taught nine grades, primary through eighth. Grades primary (we called it "primer") through third were taught in one room and grades four through eight were taught in the other. The most exciting day of my childhood was my first day in school. I had always been a sickly little runt and my mother had kept me out of school until I was seven and a half years old. I was very excited about starting to school. I walked the half mile with my two older brothers, Bill and Dillard, who were in the fourth grade. When we arrived they went to their room after telling me to go to my room with a third grade friend. We were very poor; there was no money to buy books and things like that at home. All the books in the schoolroom were an unusual sight for me. The huge blackboard behind the teacher's desk caught my attention and aroused my curiosity. I asked my friend, "What's all those do-hicky marks across the top of that thing?" "A B Cs" he said. "Which one is ?'?" I asked. He pointed it out. "B?" He showed me. I kept asking and he kept answering until we got to "F." Since my mother had taught me to say them in order, and he had pointed them out in order, I could learn the rest of them myself. By the time the bell rang for school to start I could recognize every letter of the alphabet. After taking our names, the teacher handed out books. I opened...