Today we begin where Fern tells us, about a year after her father donated the $500 to the church he announced suddenly: “We’re moving; we’re selling the farm; these children are not getting a proper education.” And he did sell the farm within 30 days.
“We moved back to Kokomo, and I entered the 7th grade and went on to finish high school there.
“For the first time in my life I loved school. I went from a school of 11 children in all the grades to a school with 90 just in my own class! There was a big, well stocked library and lots of school activities. Going to school became meaningful, at last.
“I became interested in both teaching and nursing and gained college degrees in both. I had completed one year toward a master’s in nursing when I switched my graduate studies toward the master’s degree I took in education. And I’ve had enjoyable, rewarding careers in both fields.
“By 1955 it was agreed that both Glenn and I wanted to live in Brown County and we moved here that same year. The lane that leads to my house leaves the main road two miles south of the T.C. Steele memorial. Our farm joins the memorial property on the north.
“Glen and I and our daughter all had riding horses here before Glen died in 1960. For 25 years my favorite was an Arabian mare I bought as a colt and trained her myself. She was a member of the family. And I had her until 1972.
“Jane is Mrs. Morris Voland. They live west of Gnaw Bone and have two sons who will be 15 and 12 in November. That pontoon boat, resting in the field belongs to Morris and Jane. They use it on Lake Monroe, at the landing about one-and-a-half miles south of here. We can get it down there in no time at all.
“I started teaching in the school system when we moved down here in 1955 and I taught at Nashville until I had to retire, due to age, at the end of the 1973-74 school year. My classroom was in the basement of the Nashville High School building.”
Fern, despite her overlapping careers and additional time spent on home improvements and with her Indian “business friends” in the southwest, raising a daughter, and responsibilities of her ill and aging mother, has managed some other travels — in Canada, Mexico and the Scandinavian countries. (Her mother’s family originated in Norway.)
She still belongs to the Union Street Friends Church in Kokomo and attends services infrequently at a Friends (Quaker) church in Bloomington. Weekend nursing duties have interfered with that attendance for the last several years. However, Fern went on to becoming a member of the Nashville Christian Church.
Currently Fern has cut her nursing schedule down to two weekends per month. That will permit her to get deeper into the Indian turquoise, rug, basket and pottery even the shop she she’s considering in Brown County.
Brown County, certainly, she’s happy here, where she came by choice nearly 50 years ago, and where she has been of continuous service to the community. She loves her house and acreage. Her daughter and the other Volands are nearby, there is quiet and beauty, and many sweet memories. There is plenty of opportunities for a future in all walks of life.
“We have exceptionally fine children and parents here in Brown County,” Fern says with a deep conviction. There’s just one, now and then, that has its own personal problems, but not many when you compare this to other communities.
“This place is just so great-the people here are beautiful, wonderful. I never, not ever, had a real teaching problem during those 19 years. If I did have what I thought might turn out to be a problem, I simply called the parents in and said: ‘This I see in your child-we’re in this together-lets not let this grow into a problem.’ And I never had a parent that didn’t work with me. Only once did I ever have to take a pupil to the principal.”
How does she explain this?
“In the first place, I think the people here are loving people-religious and hard working-good average Americans that want good, wholesome principals in their children. Most of the parents I’ve known lived with their children and had fun with them. They had a strong family life like that I had, when I was a child. Perhaps city children are missing this. Unless you have a strong home, you’re not likely to have a strong child.”
Can a small, relatively poor school system like ours afford to hire and keep good teachers?
“Yes,” came the firm response.
“First you have to get teachers who are really interested in children. Of course you make more money in larger communities but it also costs more to live there. I know a girl who went from here to Chicago at double the salary. Before long she was writing: How I wish I could come back! I didn’t realize what beautiful children I had, and what a beautiful teaching situation I had in Brown County.
“I don’t know a thing about the high school, but I do know the teachers in the elementary schools are completely co-operative. I don’t think you’ll find a harder working, more conscientious group of teachers anywhere.”
Recently there was an indication that hard working, conscientious Mrs. Howe is herself appreciated. She was named 1974 Senior 4-H Fair Queen and represented the county at this year’s Indiana State Fair. We asked the retired teacher, practicing nurse, horsewoman, do-it-yourselfer and Indian crafts connoisseur if she’d fulfilled all her heart’s desires.
“All but one,” Fern Howe replied promptly.
“From my earliest days I wanted to be a forest ranger. But I’m doing the next best thing-just living in the woods here and enjoying every minute of it!”
Fern was born March 28, 1908 the daughter of Edward Keeler and Clara Hinkle Keeler. She died April 26, 1992. She is at rest in the Greenlawn Cemetery, right here in Brown County where she loved living, and where all her students loved her.
Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
