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Collected
In 2005, an annual tradition began with the Elgin High School graduates of the 1950s meeting for a covered dish luncheon. The groups would meet at the St. Peter’s Lutheran Church fellowship hall following the Western Days parade. Conversations at these reunions always recalled experiences with teachers.
The reunion in 2017 evoked several memories about Kittie Cain Henderson who devoted much of her life educating students at the Elgin High School. Henderson, herself, was a native Elginite, a great granddaughter of Mary Christian Burleson who built the first house in Elgin.
Besides teaching World History and Spanish, Henderson was the librarian during the 1950s. In earlier years, she had also served as principal. When she retired, three generations of certain families had taken her Spanish classes. She tried to bring Spanish to life by having conversations, celebrations and parties.
Emely Lundgren Sundbeck related that in 1950 and 1951, the class was having a Mexican party complete with pinata, etc. The boys were blindfolded and took swings with the bat, but could not hit the pinata, so Josephine Haynie said it was the girls’ time. Haynie took a hard swing and hit Henderson in the head. Blood was gushing but she was not hurt badly. They said that put a real damper on the party.
Leland Lundgren said that a few years later his Spanish class was giving a Christmas assembly in Spanish. They were reliving the procession into Jerusalem, marching around the stage using candles and singing O Little Town of Bethlehem in Spanish. He was singing loudly and his candle lit Joyce Goertz’s blonde hair. He quickly dropped his candle and took both hands and put out the fire. Luckily, it happened so fast that she did not lose much hair.
Dolores Frost Bates said Henderson went through all new library books to see if there were any obscene words in the books. If there were any, she would take a razor blade and cut out the word(s) and you would find a hole cut out as you read. You could imagine what had been cut out. When Camp Swift closed, the school received many donated books for the library. She had her hands full deleting bad text words or words that the soldiers had written in the books.
Sydna Davis Arbuckle added that Henderson regularly bought new cars from Arbuckle’s daddy and she liked to see how fast the cars would run. Henderson was always complaining to Davis about the speeding tickets she received.
Henderson always sent picture postcards from her international travels to the Davis family, which fueled daughter Judy’s wanderlust. Her favorite card was from Cairo where Henderson related that she was on her hotel balcony overlooking the Nile River where King Farouk’s yacht was anchored.
Thirty years later, Judy was standing on her hotel balcony overlooking the Nile and imagining that she and Henderson were sharing the scene together.
The Mary Christian Burleson house mentioned is now being restored by Elgin citizens. Camp Swift closed at the end of World War II.
Now that schools are back in session, please think of the Elgin Depot Museum when planning field trips, which bring the early history of Elgin to life. A beautiful exhibit now shows off the huge effort to map and tell the big story of the Queen of Texas Trails – El Camino Real de los Tejas: Its History, People and Places traveling exhibit.
For more information, visit https://facebook. com/elgin.depot.
