I believe it was the 1936 Thanksgiving snowstorm, when I was 5, that closed down the town and much of the state.  I do remember Mr. Earl Trow, who was delivering milk in his truck for the Iowa State Dairy Industry Department around Ames, that became stuck in that terrible snowstorm near our home at Ninth and Ridgewood.  He came to our home and father took him down to the basement for him to warm up by the coal-fired furnace.

If these kids stayed in Ames through high school, they would have been the class of 1949.  I was in the class of 1948 because of the principal at Whittier, Miss Grobe. Each classroom included two grades: 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 5th and 6th. Miss Grobe also taught the 5th and 6th graders. Each day, I would finish my fifth grade work before my classmates and then listen to whatever the sixth graders were doing.  At the end of that school year, Miss Grobe talked with my parents and then with me, and we all agreed that I would go to 7th grade at Central in the fall...