With the new school year quickly approaching, I was thinking about the first school I ever went to – John Hay Elementary here in North Minneapolis. I started kindergarten in Mrs. Jones’ room 109 in September 1956. In those days kindergarten was only half day so you either went in the morning or in the afternoon. I think the reason I was in the morning class was because my mom thought it would be easier to keep me clean and ready for school if she sent me first thing in the morning. I can remember the school had those toilets where the tanks are up in the air and you pulled a chain to flush it, which I’d never seen before. I also remember it had cloak closets, wide wooden staircases and a wooden floor gym in the basement.
As a kid, I never thought about the history of the school and it wasn’t until adulthood that I learned about its history. It was named for John Hay, an American statesman who was a private secretary to President Abraham Lincoln and the Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. John Hay Elementary was a brick and wood structure, and was built in 1906 with an addition added in 1925. However, it didn’t start out being called John Hay. It was originally called Abraham Lincoln School. Then in 1923 Minneapolis built Lincoln Junior High on the other half of the block and renamed the old elementary school John Hay.
Minneapolis didn’t use school busses when I was in grade school so I, like everyone else, walked to school. Minneapolis elementary schools also weren’t built with lunchrooms then, so students had to walk home for lunch and then back afterwards. For me that meant making the trek between our house at 421 Queen Ave N and the school, which was on Penn and Oak Park Aves, four times a day. It also meant having to cross Olson Memorial Highway four times a day. Of course all of us kids who lived south of the highway were told both by our parents and teachers to cross it at Penn where there was a traffic light. That didn’t always happen. There were many times when I and others ran across the highway at Queen. In the winter when it was cold, we always crossed at Penn because the Shink brothers, who owned the Olson Highway Drugs store on the corner, would let us stand inside their doorway to get out of the wind and warm up a bit. We never had “snow days” but if it was a certain number of degrees below zero in the morning and you lived far enough from the school, which I did, you could bring a lunch from home and stay and eat it at your desk instead of walking home in the bitter cold. Lunch generally consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich along with some milk in a glass jelly or salad dressing jar in a paper bag. I would pray all the way to school that the jar wouldn’t break in the cold.
When I was at John Hay in the 1950s and early ‘60s it was a diverse school with over 650 students of different races, ethnic groups, religions and economic situations. During the holidays there was a real Christmas tree and a large Menorah, with lightbulbs instead of candles, in the main hallway. Each of the kindergarten rooms also had Christmas trees. We all made Christmas ornaments, paper chains and Hanukkah dreidels and hung them on the tree. For Halloween we were all given a free pumpkin from a local grocer, but that’s a story for a different day. The building was torn down in the late 1970s, but I have fond memories of that old school.