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It's been several years since Jimmie (Tucker) Sutton
walked across a stage and received her diploma; in fact, it's been three-quarters
of a century.
When Cullowhee High School graduates gathered two weeks ago for a reunion
(see related story on page 8C), Jimmie, 93, was the oldest present and
the only member from her class - 1928 - to attend.
Cullowhee High was consolidated with Sylva-Webster 15 years ago to form
Smoky Mountain High, but Jimmie Sutton had been a high school graduate
for six decades by then.
Born in 1910, Jimmie has witnessed all the cataclysmic events of the
20th century as well as the tempestuous beginning of the 21st.
She was a small child during World War I and a young school teacher
during the Great Depression. By the time of President Kennedy's assassination,
a watershed event for my generation, Sutton was 53 years old.
Jimmie's reminiscences offer glimpses of school days in Cullowhee in
a time when the lines between college and community were blurred, and
local students attended school on campus beginning with first grade.
Sutton and her large family lived in Haywood County until she was in
seventh grade. Her parents, John Milas and Hattie Moody Tucker, had
eight children, and Hattie Tucker was determined they were going to
attend school in Cullowhee, Jimmie said.
Jimmie's father went to see a Mr. Cowan who owned property in Lovesfield
with the idea of working on Cowan's place and moving the Tucker family
to Jackson County.
"Papa went to see him one Sunday morning," Jimmie said. "While
Papa was there Mr. Cowan went to crank his car - it was one of those
with a crank on the front - and the car jumped forward and killed Mr.
Cowan."
In spite of such an inauspicious beginning, the Tuckers moved to Lovesfield,
and the children went to school in Cullowhee, Jimmie said.
The school she attended was located where Brown Cafeteria is now, Jimmie
said. Subsequent generations of Cullowhee students would attend school
on the Western Carolina University campus at McKee and Camp Lab training
schools before Cullowhee Valley School was completed in 1994.
She remembers walking to school one day with a big group of friends
(her family had moved to Speedwell by this time), and somebody suggesting
they skip school that day.
"We climbed the hill where we could look off on East LaPorte, we
ate our lunch we had with us, and we came down in time to get home,"
Jimmie said.
The truants were reported and had to go before Dr. Allen at the college,
Jimmie said.
"He had us to write something, and he talked to us," Jimmie
said. "We didn't skip school any more after that."
Dr. Allen was serious, Jimmie said, and almost never laughed. She saw
him laugh just once, when he was telling about his honeymoon.
"They were traveling and he had his wife to ask some people they
met how far it was to the town, and they said, 'You're in it.' That
just tickled him to death," Jimmie said.
In considering her high school days, Jimmie remembers a French teacher
who didn't speak French.
"She didn't know French any more than I did, but she said to us,
'Ya'll ought to be reading French,'" Jimmie said.
During high school some of her classes were at the college.
"Some of the teachers scared me to death, but I got along all right
with them," she said.
After she graduated from high school, Jimmie got a job teaching school
at Cane Creek, a one-teacher school, and took college classes at night.
"I don't know how I did it. That was awful, having to teach and
then go to a class," Jimmie said.
While she eventually earned an undergraduate degree at WCU, she said
that back then a four-year degree was not a requirement for teaching,
but you had to have taken some college courses.
After four years at Cane Creek, Jimmie taught at Willets, located near
her present home, which was a bigger school and had four teachers.
Jimmie continued to teach elementary school after she married Guy Sutton,
a fellow educator. Over the course of her career, she taught at schools
in Franklin, Robbinsville and Highlands.
As Fairview's Carolyn Pannell was named Jackson County's Teacher of
the Year Tuesday night, I found myself recalling Jimmie Sutton as an
example of the value Jackson County citizens have traditionally placed
on education.
When Jimmie was 13 or 14 years old, she and her sister operated one
end of a crosscut saw as they helped their father saw pines on the hill
where Smoky Mountain High stands today. They were cutting the trees
to get the poles Jimmie's father needed to line the ditches he dug to
drain the low-lying areas where the SMHS and Fairview athletic fields
are presently located.
Her father moved his family to this county in search of a better education
for his children, and Jimmie repaid that commitment by taking full advantage
of the opportunity and then sharing that hard-earned knowledge with
several generations of mountain children.
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