Her parents paid tuition of $9 a year for Eula Benson Foley, born in Central Point in 1906, to attend the two-room Howard Grade School in Medford.
Benson Foley remembered going to school when the Spanish influenza required students to wear nose masks and the school year was cut short. She had fond memories of Superintendent Ercel Hedrick who took his post right after leaving the army.
Hedrick believed boys needed physical exercise, so he called cadence, “left, left, left-right, left,” as students marched around the school yard. His punishment for misbehaving boys was to make them move the wood pile a few feet over. After they had moved it, he made them move it back.
Benson Foley remembered that teams of boys and girls competed with other schools in basketball at the Masonic Hall.
Her class of 1922, six boys and five girls, was the last that allowed graduating seniors to leave with a teaching certificate, including Benson Foley and three others. She taught at the Table Rock School and lodged with one of the families. The next year, she went to the University of Oregon.
Source: Moorehouse, Linda. “Recollections by Eula Benson Foley.” At The Crossroads: a history of Central Point 1850-1900. Central Point, Ore.: L.M. Genaw, 1989. Print.
