The memories of a country school teacher

  • Bernice Marfice Kopetzky, taken at the Maple Grove Country School Museum by Susan Fineman.
    Bernice Marfice Kopetzky, taken at the Maple Grove Country School Museum by Susan Fineman.
  • A traveling photographer took a school picture of the students on the front steps of the Maple Grove Country School. Bernice Marfice is the little girl in the front row, second from the right. The teacher was Marcella Klein Wheeler, then unmarried.
    A traveling photographer took a school picture of the students on the front steps of the Maple Grove Country School. Bernice Marfice is the little girl in the front row, second from the right. The teacher was Marcella Klein Wheeler, then unmarried.
Now it is a museum, moved years ago to the west side of Table Rock’s Square. However, in 1937, it was the Maple Grove Country School and first-grader Bernice Marfice proudly joined brothers Bill and Paul and 27 others for her first day of school ever. Some of the kids wore shoes, she said, and a few came barefoot. Besides her own lessons, she says, she paid attention to what the other students…

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