FORT SMITH — Last January, Clara Sax Smith found an old school photo taken March 3, 1926, when she was 7 years old. The photo depicted 21 boys and 17 girls in first to third grades wearing handmade dresses and overalls and hand-knit sweaters, standing in front of a small wooden schoolhouse, St. Mary School in Altus, with their pastor, Father Placidus Oeschle and their teacher, a Benedictine nun.
“I wonder what happened to the three boys and four girls who graduated with me in 1932?” she wondered.
Clara, who had moved to Shawnee Mission, Kan., years earlier, had kept up with classmate Thelma Elser Blake, a Fort Smith resident, but had lost touch with everyone else.
The two friends enlisted the help of Betty Doerpinghaus, Clara’s cousin, in locating their classmates. All three boys — Micheal White, Rupert Buergler and Herbert Becker — had passed away, but all five girls were still alive, living in three different states from coast to coast, and leading active, busy lives.
On June 5, three of the five girls, joined by a fourth girl who had attended St. Mary in her First Communion year, started a weekend of festivities and reminiscing at Goodson’s Restaurant in Fort Smith.
“Helen (Elser Hanley) and Agnes (Snider Price) wanted to come, but couldn’t get away,” Smith said. “Agnes had a wedding to go to in West Virginia, and Helen couldn’t get away (from Spokane, Wash.) She’s in pretty good health, though, and still volunteers in the hospital.”
Friends and classmates Thelma Elser Blake, Marie Elser, Clara Sax Smith and Margaret Timmermann Bartlett were surrounded by family, newspaper and television crews during their Goodson’s luncheon, but that didn’t stop them from enjoying lunch and chatting together.
“Ever since we’ve all found one another again, we’ve kept in touch,” Blake said.
They were taught by three Benedictine sisters — Sisters Geraldine Adams, Wilhemine Bockenrucher and Flavia Fritschle, OSB — in a three-room schoolhouse with two or three grades in each classroom. They ate homemade lunches at their wooden desks and played marbles and ball in the schoolyard next to the church. In the small farming community, many of the children were related to one another — lots of Elsers, Timmermanns, Buerglers, Saxes and Beckers in the group.
Clara Sax Smith graduated in 1932 alongside her niece, Agnes Snider Price, who is four months her senior.
The graduates were well-trained, and all are retired from careers in different fields. Smith, who traveled the country as her husband moved from assignment to assignment with General Motors and RCI, worked in insurance and for the Internal Revenue Service while raising three children. Her niece Betty Doerpinghaus, who lives in Ridgefield, Wash., stopped by Shawnee Mission, Kan., to pick her up en route to the reunion.
Elser, who never married, enjoyed a long career with Southwestern Bell in St. Louis and Belleville, Ill. She moved back to Alma last year to be closer to her extended family.
Blake, while raising five children, worked as a nurse for 40 years, retiring in 1983. Both Blake and Elser said their cousin, Father Bill Elser, is a frequent visitor to the Fort Smith area, keeping busy presiding over family weddings, baptisms and other special occasions.
Bartlett worked in a shoe factory in Clarksville while raising four children. Now widowed, Smith, Blake, and Bartlett stay close to their children and grandchildren and involved in church and community activities.
Doerpinghaus made a special reunion journal for each of the graduates, with nine biographical picture pages, nine pages of childhood and family photos, a picture of St. Mary Church and the class picture that inspired the whole event.
On the weekend of June 7, the group attended Mass at St. Mary Church, where pastor Father Hilary Filiatreau, OSB, recognized them with a special Mass intention.
Carla Reames, Smith’s great-niece, said the friends will continue to stay in touch with one another. Finding one another again after 76 years was a precious gift, enabling them to go back and remember simpler times.
