(Editor’s note: With the 100th anniversary of Bright School’s founding approaching, this is one of a periodic series of stories looking at its history through interviews, documentation and personal reminiscences).
I was in the first grade at Bright School from 1966-67 and recently received a treat that not everyone gets to enjoy 45 years later – sitting down and visiting with my former first grade teacher, Adele Baker.
We had a delightful time reminiscing about her career at Bright and elsewhere, as well as recalling my and my contemporaries‘ times as students.
Since I think we have crossed paths only once or twice since I graduated from Bright four decades ago, she admitted when I pulled up to her Brainerd home for the interview/reunion that she probably would not have recognized me out in public.
But she seemed to have very sharp recall as she remembered much about both that time period in her life and some of her students.
I learned that she had come to Bright in a rather indirect manner.
Following her graduation from the University of Chattanooga in 1954 after attending Notre Dame High School, she taught at Clifton Hills Elementary near Rossville Boulevard and later at East Brainerd Elementary.
A former Clifton Hills colleague, the late Shirley Norris (later Shirley Hodge), had begun teaching kindergarten at Bright in 1960, and in early 1962, Ms. Baker found herself interviewing at Bright for a job as well.
At the time, Bright School was in its final days in its now-razed building in Fort Wood, and Ms. Baker has not forgotten going there and meeting school founder Mary Gardner Bright. Miss Bright had retired from the day-to-day administration of the school in 1961, but was still living in an apartment on the top floor of the school.
“I put on my high heels and gloves and left and went down on a Saturday and met with Miss Bright, and when I left, I had the job,” Ms. Baker said. “She was very lovely and very nice and took me through the school and said that they were building a new school and that they were quite proud of the job the teachers were doing.”
She added that Miss Bright also told her some history of the school, pointing out that some of the longtime teachers – which Miss Bright called the Old Guard – were getting ready to retire. Miss Baker, who became part of the “New Guard,” was replacing the retiring Mary Ellen Lynde.
Ms. Baker said Mrs. Hodge had recommended her and that she did not even apply for the job. At that time, Ms. Baker said, people did not apply for jobs at Bright, but that Miss Bright simply contacted potential teachers.
So Ms. Baker – who taught both first and second grade in her career -- began teaching first grade there in 1962. Her class, she remembered, was on the first floor adjoining the office of second-year headmistress Mary Dalton Davis, whom Ms. Baker had known at the University of Chattanooga.
Just as Ms. Baker was getting settled in her new teaching environment, she was uprooted again, but in a good sort of way. During spring break 1963, the school moved to its more spacious and modern new location in North Chattanooga/Riverview.
“The teachers spent spring break moving there,” she recalled.
For the 16 years Ms. Baker was at Bright, she taught first grade in the classroom that was the second one on the left as one headed down the hall in a northerly direction from the office.
In looking at her experience at Bright, on the other hand, she would put it first in order.
“The parents were lovely,” she said. “When you said, ‘Johnny needs some help, they would work with Johnny.’ And the students didn’t want for anything. They grew up with manners and wanted to learn.
“Also, you could move faster. The curriculum was a little more advanced. It was just a nice atmosphere. People were nice to each other. You didn’t have any yelling or screaming.”
Several of the teachers and other staff members at the time lived in the Brainerd area, and they would often carpool together for a period after meeting up at the former American National Bank branch off Brainerd Road, Ms. Baker said. Her fellow carpoolers included Mrs. Hodge, Betty Lauderdale, Martha Becton and Gaylor Raley.
Ms. Becton and Ms. Baker actually lived near each other until not too long ago, Ms. Baker said, and still stay in touch regularly. Mrs. Raley, meanwhile, is remembered with a touch of sadness, as she was diagnosed with brain cancer while at Bright and later died at a relatively young age. It was likely the first time many Bright students of that era were exposed to the horrific disease up close.
Among the administration, Ms. Baker said that she enjoyed working with Dr. Davis, who during the early years at the North Chattanooga school lived in an upstairs apartment at Bright with her husband, Everett, who had become a widower not too long before.
In 1978, Ms. Baker, who later worked under several other headmasters, decided to leave Bright after realizing her retirement pension would be greater in the public schools. She then taught for 3½ years at Woodmore Elementary before finishing her career in 1993 at Hixson Elementary, taking early retirement to help take care of her mother.
These days, she still lives in the 1950s’ style home where her parents lived and stays active with her church, OLPH Catholic Church, and volunteers at OLPH School and the Chattanooga Food Bank.
She also enjoys backyard bird watching, and tending her roses and a croton plant in her kitchen. The latter she acquired in 1962 and always kept in her classrooms.
She is still nurturing, just as she enjoyed doing as a teacher for 31 years, including several at Bright.
“I truly enjoyed the little children and working with them and seeing them learn and make progress,” she said.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net