Page 20 - Discover Winter 2021

Kate’s Corner CONTINUED
If they got anything less than an “A”,
even if it was an “A-”, we somehow felt
justified in our low grades because “it was
a tough quiz”. If they got the usual “A”,
we’d shake our heads and roll our eyes,
disappointed that they had succeeded once
again in exposing us as slackers. If any of
the rest of us happened to get the occasional
“A”, we would suddenly feel a connection to
those two, and the need to boast a little by
discussing the quiz with them.
“I thought number 5 could have been
answered in any of three ways, didn’t you?”
or “The only reason I got number 3 right
is because I remembered that the median
of a right triangle from the right angle to
the hypotenuse is half the length of the
hypotenuse.”
Usually it was just the two of them,
however, discussing the quiz as they walked
side-by-side to their next class.
Their elective subjects were Latin,
Trigonometry, Physics and Chemistry…
while my friends and I took art, home
economics, typing and mixed chorus. So,
at every class reunion, it was natural to ask
about them. They were, after all, the top two
students in our class, a distinction that they
held every year from ninth grade through
graduation. I was curious about their adult
lives and their careers.
A total of 53 students were in the
graduating class of 1953. The name of our
school was Watervliet High School. It was a
two-story brick building on the opposite end
of town from the Watervliet Paper Mill, an
even bigger brick building. The two structures
kept the town balanced – both visually and
economically. We were educated in one and
worked in the other – or at least one person in
the family did.
Although our school was called “the
18 Discover Smith Mountain Lake WINTER 2020
high school”, it housed 1st through 12th
grades. Kindergarten was in a separate
building on the school grounds. The name
of our little town, which was about the size
of Bedford without any promises of future
growth or prosperity, was Watervliet, as you
may have guessed.
It earned its name because of the Paw
Paw River, which touches a portion of the
town during its 68 mile trek toward Lake
Michigan. Watervliet is a Dutch name
meaning “water flowing” or “flowing water”.
This I have been told or read. Presumably the
“water” portion of the name is English as I
can understand and even spell it. Therefore,
the “vliet” portion must be Dutch and mean
“flowing”. It is believed there is only one other
town in the USA (and the Netherlands) with
the same name and it is in New York. My
Watervliet is in Michigan.
Anyway, over the years we had heard
that Sharon had moved to Nashville. Could
she have switched from violin to fiddle? I
thought not. We had been classmates since
5th grade, so I knew a little bit about her,
and she just wasn’t the type to end up on
Grand Ole Opry. I figured she must be with
a symphony orchestra, and likely touring
Europe or Russia doing high brow concerts.
Rumor had it that Donna was working
in her father’s lab in Illinois. Her father was a
bacteriologist. Yes, I could picture Donna in a
white lab coat, bent over a microscope.
After a couple of weeks of searching
through Ancestry and the White Pages,
etc, I found both women. What a thrill! For
the first time in 67 years I was speaking to
Sharon. Yes, indeed, she had lived and worked
in Nashville, but as a teacher of music, not an
entertainer. She had been invited to apply for
a position with the orchestra there, but when
she learned that she would have to pay union
dues from the money she earned, she said,