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Joyce Hamilton Terrell

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Joyce Hamilton Terrell
Remember Those Days
Interview with Jeannette Burke and Joyce Terrell
Students at Jeffersonville High School 1959-1962

Interviewer just setting up for the interview and giving those being interviewed instructions
Okay, I'll send you my, my address. We'll go ahead and get started.
Burke: Okay, so hmm, I'm saying this is Tammy Burke, who has a friend, Jen Weidner that works at Jeffersonville Township Public Library. I'm conducting interviews for Remember Those Days Jeffersonville High School 1950 to 1970 oral history project with a grant from Indiana Genealogical Society. And today we're here with Jeanette Burke and Joyce Terrell who have been best friends all this time. So, the first question, and I'm going to have Joyce go first.
Tammy Burke 1:07 Who were your parents?
Joyce Terrell 1:10 Hubert Hamilton and Cleo.
Tammy Burke 1:16 Your mom's first name was what?
Joyce Terrell 1:18 Cleo, Cleo
Tammy Burke 1:20 And your dad's first name?
Joyce Terrell 1:21 Cleo
Tammy Burke 1:24 Okay.
Jeanette Burke 1:27 What was your dad's first name?
Joyce Terrell 1:31 Hubert
Tammy Burke 1:32 Hubert, Okay, And did, did Walter (Joyce's husband) go to Jeff High?
Joyce Terrell 1:41 No, it went to New Albany.
Tammy Burke 1:42 Okay. Ooh, rival
Jeanette Burke 1:45 Fight
Tammy Burke 1:47 Okay mom, who were your parents.
Jeanette Burke 1:50 Olie and Ruby Turk. That come out right? (Jeanette married William R. Burke who went to Flaget high school)
Tammy Burke 1:55 Yes.
Jeanette Burke 1:55 Okay.
Tammy Burke 1:57 Okay. Joyce, where did you live while you were in high school?
Joyce Terrell 2:05 Okay, I had, for two years I lived at 802 Walnut Street. That was my grandmother's house.
Tammy Burke 2:21 Yeah?

Jeanette Burke 2:24 And the other two years I lived at 1045 Avondale court. Okay.
Tammy Burke 2:34 Mom, Jeanette. Where did you live during high school years?
Jeanette Burke 2:37 I lived at 425 Jane Avenue.
Tammy Burke 2:44 And does that still exist?
Jeanette Burke 2:46 No, they tore it down.
Tammy Burke 2:47 Where was it?
Jeanette Burke 2:48 It was right in the middle of, like, Memorial Park in Jeffersonville.
Tammy Burke 2:54 Which is actually now the parks department area.
Jeanette Burke 2:59 It's not even a park anymore right there on that lot that little a lot across from the swing sets and the sets all been replaced and moved, aww Lord.
Tammy Burke 3:12 Okay, next question. Joyce, do you remember about how many students were in your graduating class.
Joyce Terrell 3:21 I guess, either one of you about 140. I think
Jeanette Burke 3:25 Sure, yeah, I think you're right. I think that's about right.
Tammy Burke 3:29 That's plenty. Okay, Did you participate in any sports or clubs?
Joyce Terrell 3:36 No, I didn't.
Tammy Burke 3:37 Joyce did not, okay mom?
Jeanette Burke 3:40 I was in Drivers Club. Just because I saw I could get my picture in the yearbook! (Laughing)
Tammy Burke 3:46 Oh that's funny! Okay. Um. What do you remember about school classrooms teachers, school grounds cetera?
Joyce Terrell 4:00 How about we start with Mr. Erwin. He was the principal,
Jeanette Burke 4:03 Yes!
Joyce Terrell 4:06 Whenever he finished with a speech, he'd always said, “Be where you ought to be, when you ought to be, whether you want to be there or not”.
Jeanette Burke 4:15 That's right, and sometimes he did a cartwheel.
Joyce Terrell 4:20 I'd forgotten that!
Jeanette Burke 4:22 Sometimes he would do a cartwheel. I mean he was....(laughing) Miss Ising, is that who you are talking about?
Joyce Terrell 4:31 Oh yeah! Math or English?
Jeanette Burke 4:35 English.
Joyce Terrell 4:36 English. Okay. Okay. Couldn't get much done in our class, but we did pass it.
Tammy Burke 4:44 Why couldn't you get much done?
Jeanette Burke 4:46 Well...
Joyce Terrell 4:46 A lot of kids not paying attention. She'd lose control with the class. [Couldn't understand part of this.]But we did learn.
Jeanette Burke 5:10 Yes!
Joyce Terrell 5:11 I did learn my English.
Jeanette Burke 5:13 Do you remember when she used to between every class. She used to get up, take her sweater off and take the sleeves of the sweater and tie her sweater to the chair, go out to the drinking fountain and take aspirin? Before every class.
Joyce Terrell 5:34 I do remember her tying her sweater to the chair.
Jeanette Burke 5:39 Yes. One day there was a student.
Joyce Terrell 5:42 I can't believe she took aspirin
Jeanette Burke 5:44 Oh, I don't know, maybe this what was wrong with her!
Jeanette Burke 5:49 I do remember a student one time. It was kind of rowdy, and he climbed out on that little porch covering. That was just passed her window and covered the doorstep going. It was over an entrance, it was just it was a half a circle, and he climbed down and told her, if she didn't raise his grade to a B he he was gonna jump. And she tried to reach out she climbed up on a pipe that went along the bottom of the wall, and was leaning out to grab him, and another student I don't know who the guy was, was going to grab her legs and hang her out the window, and she jumped down. ( Laughing)
Joyce Terrell 6:45 We had wild classmates didn't we!
Jeanette Burke 6:48 And Bill Rouse. She always wrote her test on the blackboard. And she's writing and he had a little box of red hots, and he would. We were all sitting back there huddled in a group, and he threw it at the at the blackboard. And just ahead of where she was writing, and she just kept writing and one of them hit her. And she looked down and saw it and came back to all of us, and was looking around his desk and the red hots all over the floor. And he's, he said, Miss Ising I did not do that and he leaned over to look and they all spilled out of his pocket.
Joyce Terrell 7:33 Oh gosh! I always used to carry candy in my purse for a snack if I got hungry.
Tammy Burke 7:43 Yeah
Joyce Terrell 7:45 This one kid found that out. He was getting in my purse when I wasn’t looking and getting my candy out. We just had a wild class. This is really the same class. You know, there was a teacher. Really only had this one teacher one time, Jeanette, that, he was from the service. He came out of the service.
Jeanette Burke 8:07 Oh, he was English teacher.
Joyce Terrell 8:11 I don't remember his name.
Jeanette Burke 8:13 I don't either.
Unknown Speaker 8:13 He came in saying attention. But you may not ever want to sit up straight, like we were on in the army,
Jeanette Burke 8:22 Yeah, sit at attention.
Joyce Terrell 8:24 He didn't last too long
[Jen Weidner 8:29 Minute 8:23-8:40 couldn't understand audio]
Jeanette Burke 8:40 I don't remember his name either, but he, like he didn't last long.
Joyce Terrell 8:45 No. I don't know why he just couldn't take it.
Jeanette Burke 8:53 Anyway.
Tammy Burke 8:54 Yeah. Next question is, did you have a favorite subject or teacher, and what made them your favorite.
Joyce Terrell 9:05 Oh, my favorite subject was English with Miss Driscoll
Jeanette Burke 9:10 Yes. Me too, me too.
Joyce Terrell 9:12 Miss Driscoll was great. She had a way of helping you learn by asking you to answer a question, and think you would be sure, even knowing you better know it cause. You know. It was just the way she was and she helped my English. My English was much better after I had her for.
Jeanette Burke 9:35 She was our senior our senior year. And she was one, if, if you did an essay or you did whatever paper you did. She wanted to see your original paper, and how you had changed it. Marked it out, Marked it around. She wanted that turned in, also. Every so often she wore a purple, this purple suit.
Joyce Terrell 10:02 Purple hair too!
Jeanette Burke 10:03 Yeah, she. That was when she, whenever purple rinse put on at the beginning of the month or something. But she looked so nice. But she was. She was dean of girls. But she had purple hair. She was. I think we were all sort of the first, my first day in her class, I thought, I'm not gonna graduate, she's gonna flunk me for sure. But she always. She always brought out and complimented on how you'd improved in class before the whole, before all the class all the times.
Tammy Burke 10:40 That's good.
Jeanette Burke 10:40 Yeah, she was a good teacher.
Tammy Burke 10:45 Okay, what are some of your fondest memories of high school
Joyce Terrell 10:58 After school, yeah. Okay.
Joyce Terrell 11:07 Well,
Jeanette Burke 11:08 We had a good time with the cafeteria.
Joyce Terrell 11:10 Yeah and in study hall,
Jeanette Burke 11:12 Yes! I was always writing notes to you.
Joyce Terrell 11:15 Mr., what was his name?
Jeanette Burke 11:18 Was its Mr. Long?
Joyce Terrell 11:20 And I wouldn't know it, but he'd be reading over my shoulder. Miss was it either Mr. Barker.
Joyce Terrell 11:26 Yeah Mr. Barker, didn't say nothing, never took my notes or anything but he, he was.
Jeanette Burke 11:33 He was a ball coach basketball coach.
Joyce Terrell 11:36 Yeah.
Jeanette Burke 11:36 He would, he would. Yeah.
Joyce Terrell 11:38 Was it Bob Barker? That's, that’s the one that's on TV.
Jeanette Burke 11:48 But he played. He was part of. He was part of the fabulous five UK. Okay, go ahead. Would you say Joyce, Cliff? Cliff Barker? It was Cliff Barker.
Joyce Terrell 12:04 Yeah, yeah.
Jeanette Burke 12:06 He was, he played basketball for the University of Kentucky, and he was part of that Coach’s fabulous five.
Joyce Terrell 12:15 Oh really?
Jeanette Burke 12:16 Yes, yes!
Tammy Burke 12:23 Okay, is there anything you'd like to add?
Joyce Terrell 12:29 To what?
Jeanette Burke 12:31 What we like the comments or anything, comments, or anything.
Joyce Terrell 12:38 Oh, wait yeah, I do like. We did like lunch. Because we had a good lunch. Cause who we sit with.
Jeanette Burke 12:46 Or jump in the car, jump in the car, and go down to the Trolly Inn for lunch. Yeah, we only had a half an hour I don't know how we did that.
Tammy Burke 12:56 I'm wondering if you went back after lunch?
Jeanette Burke 12:58 We did, we did. Okay, yeah. How about how about that reading, that speed reading class, Joyce?
Joyce Terrell 13:12 We had a speed reading class. Yes, and I don't know what made me do this. But I don't know whether I wasn't paying attention or what she asked me if I was bored and I'm gonna say Jeanette.
Jeanette Burke 13:28 You say no, no, that's okay go ahead. [Laughing] I thought I would die; I couldn't believe it! Miss Waddell. That was Miss Waddell.
Joyce Terrell 13:50 We had this one, wasn’t my favorite teacher, but we had that lady, this shorthand teacher.
Jeanette Burke 13:58 Oh, Miss Shrader!
Joyce Terrell 14:01 Yeah, yeah, Miss Shrader I don't know what she taught us. She was trying to teach us shorthand so we would understand what our bosses was saying, or she just couldn't talk. Because she was, she was like, she was chewing it out. It didn't make me, couldn't hardly understand what she was saying, and it was really fast.
Jeanette Burke 14:22 Yeah!
Joyce Terrell 14:24 We never did need it anyway, good thing.
Jeanette Burke 14:29 She would. She would start talking. She would start talking and then it would go into [unintelligent sounds] like that, you know, just like she's chewing her words. And we had a bunch of kids in that class and she, she dictated a letter to us. And while she was dictating, she would talk like that. And it got back to me. And I started out reading what I understood and then did what she did. [Laughing] And I said, no one can understand you. And the one time, she had us read out of the book. The shorthand sentences. There was a letter in the book ,we had to read the shorthand.
Joyce Terrell 15:13 Uhh huh
Jeanette Burke 15:19 I lost my place. While I was reading this time, I lost my place and she said, "well, if you were paying attention you wouldn't lose your place." Well, later in the class she lost her place. And I'm sitting back there and...
Joyce Terrell 15:38 What did you say?
Jeanette Burke 15:39 I said, well, if you were paying attention you wouldn't be losing your place.
Joyce Terrell 15:50 [Laughing] Remember we had typing class?
Jeanette Burke 15:52 Yes
Joyce Terrell 15:54 You had to take turns on the electric typewriters. And then there was one time a bee got in there, in the classroom. And I couldn't type. I couldn't type because of the bee in the room by the typewriters.
Jeanette Burke 16:09 It was flying in and out of the keys!
Joyce Terrell 16:12 And I was working around the bee trying to, I don’t know if we had a test or what.
Jeanette Burke 16:20 The speed, the speed test. Joyce's going “Jeanette, Jeanette, I can't stop”.
Joyce Terrell 16:35 But anyway, those were good times, I don't know, they were just kind of weird, but I guess everybody is.
Jeanette Burke 16:42 Well we had fun. We had a lot of fun in school, it was.
Joyce Terrell 16:46 Oh yeah!
Jeanette Burke 16:48 A different atmosphere.
Joyce Terrell 16:49 Mr. Detamore
Jeanette Burke 16:53 I didn't have him this class. Yeah.
Joyce Terrell 16:57 And I was. I worked at Woolworths in the evenings. So that's how, by the time I, I got to his class I was sleepy. So I was always nodding off. If he got after me about it why, I was always sleeping. I told him. After that he called me a soda jerk.
Tammy Burke 17:21 Was he was it easier on you though once he knew why you were tired?
Joyce Terrell 17:26 He was an easier on me, but I had a hard time learning in his class. I, almost, almost failed his class and Mrs. Driscoll went to the dean and I told her about it. And also told her that my parents were getting a divorce that year, at that time, and I was pretty upset over it. So she went and talk to him and he. So, he said if I took a test that he would pass me. That's how I got my diploma cause I would have had to wait till summer school is over. But anyway, I was able to take the test and pass it. But, yeah, Mr. Detamore was okay. He really was! He liked to call me a soda jerk.
Tammy Burke 18:14 What was his name?
Joyce Terrell 18:16 Mr. Detamore.
Jeanette Burke 18:17 Detamore, Detamore Yeah, okay. He had a curl he sort of wore his hair and there was like a curl. Like a curl. I have to show you a picture. [Laughing]
Joyce Terrell 18:29 I'm surprised he liked me though.
Jeanette Burke 18:31 Well, he was a little strange.
Joyce Terrell 18:34 For years. so, for me and Jay Davis misbehaved in spitting down on his car. So he made him go down and clean it up. Surprised he liked me, you know, he didn't hold that against me.
Jeanette Burke 18:53 Yeah.
Joyce Terrell 18:55 Okay, to tell that?
Jeanette Burke 18:56 Yeah. They are. All these people we’re talking about Joyce, are dead! We can say anything! Mr. Allen for biology. I had him first hour, and he had a monotone voice, and he would put me to sleep. Then the next semester, I had him right after lunch. And it wasn't any better. I thought he should make recordings for people with
Tammy Burke 19:30 Insomnia
Jeanette Burke 19:31 Insomnia, I thought he, he could put you right to sleep. He was very nice man but gosh, he was boring, he was like this yea straight line aww.
Joyce Terrell 19:49 I forced myself to learn to like biology class. I had a crush on somebody in there. And so, and he was real smart. So, I decided that I didn't report to the classes. And I was, I wasn't afraid to cut up whatever was that had [to be] cut up a frog or whatever.
Jeanette Burke 20:11 You had Miss Reich didn't ya?
Joyce Terrell 20:14 Uh huh.
Jeanette Burke 20:15 Yeah, that's what she made you do. Miss Reich was at the high school when Carlana was there. Yeah, and she, she looked the same. She had.
Joyce Terrell 20:26 Some people can do that!
Jeanette Burke 20:28 And she did that. She never looked different. I mean, she was like, she was
Joyce Terrell 20:37 No, it was Miss Rose, Miss Rose like she might be ninety, she was probably was fifty or so.
Jeanette Burke 20:46 We were. When we were studying government. It was something about a law was in Mr., oh what was, Brogan, Mr. Brogan's class. He actually had that book memorized. Because the first time I was in his class I thought, oh god, I've heard this before, and he was practically reciting the book. But he was talking about it with some kind of law in Indiana where a teacher had to retire at 65. And we all looked up and he said, I know who you're thinking about Miss Rose. She was. She would fall asleep. She would she give us a test. And she set up off to the side by the board and fall asleep. And we'd all get busy and turn pages in our book and cheat.
Tammy Burke 21:39 Well!
Jeanette Burke 21:41 Yeah, she would fall asleep, and then we would. If there was something we didn't know we just, we’d take our, our shoes off, and turn the pages with our feet.
Tammy Burke 21:52 Cheaters!
Jeanette Burke 21:53 And then somebody would go, Miss Rose”, I liked to do that Miss Rose, go anyway.
Joyce Terrell 22:01 Yeah
Jeanette Burke 22:02 Okay, what's the other questions?
Tammy Burke 22:03 That's it.
Jeanette Burke 22:04 That's it.
Tammy Burke 22:05 Yeah
Jeanette Burke 22:06 I bet we got the best stuff Joyce!
Joyce Terrell 22:09 I bet we do. A friend of mine, not you. You there?
Jeanette Burke 22:19 Yeah, I'm here.
Joyce Terrell 22:22 She grabbed my book, my math book.
Jeanette Burke 22:25 Oh, I know who it was. I knew that I remember,
Joyce Terrell 22:30 I was so timid about that!
Jeanette Burke 22:32 We won't say anything.
Joyce Terrell 22:33 She kept my book. Like I had to pay for it before I could graduate. ( laughing) I went without a math book the whole rest of the class, the rest of the semester. I don't know how I managed to pass it, but I did.
Jeanette Burke 22:57 Was that the same one that took your purse and dumped it out along the cafeteria? I know who it was
Joyce Terrell 23:03 I could go on. She knocked my books out of my hand one time and scattered them in the hallway.
Jeanette Burke 23:08 And she was our friend.
Joyce Terrell 23:09 She was a friend and I still love her, but you know. [Laughing]
Tammy Burke 23:25 Oh my gosh!
Jeanette Burke 23:25 She had fun she was a giggly person, we had fun. That is, it?
Tammy Burke 23:30 Yeah, those are all the questions.
Jeanette Burke 23:30 This was good Joyce.
Tammy Burke 23:31 I mean, it's been like 25 minutes, 23 minutes.
Jeanette Burke 23:36 Okay.
Tammy Burke 23:37 So I'm going to stop it and then you can say whatever you want. [Laughing]

This interview is dedicated to William R. Burke husband of Jeanette Burke, he died not long after this interview was conducted.