What Do You Remember About Rippey?
The Rippey, Iowa, Sesquicentennial will be held on Saturday, August 1, 2020. If you have personal remembrances of Rippey, you are invited and encouraged to share those memorable stories. Just send your remembrance via email and we’ll get it posted on the Rippey News Web site, as well as on Facebook sites of the Friends of Rippey and the Rippey Sesquicentennial. You write down the anecdote or story–a page or two–and we’ll do the rest.
Phyllis McElheney Lepke is serving as our volunteer coordinator and stories may be sent to her at Rippey150@gmail.com.
Jim Fouch wrote this inspirational story for “I Remember Rippey” about how the Rippey School made a difference in his life. After college, he practiced optometry in Idaho for 45 years. He has three children, three step-children, 12 grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.
Sports, Sports, Sports
From my earliest years, it was sports. Pick up baseball games, pick up football games, pick up basketball games. All within walking or biking distance even at the age of 5 and beyond. Games at the baseball field for baseball and football about ¼ mile from home. Many times with my brother Bill, who was 5 years older, (much to his chagrin, as I’m sure he thought of it as babysitting) and others older than I. But if I pouted about getting the crap kicked out of me, I was told to sit down. Really didn’t want that to happen! Later, basketball at I.J. Burk’s slab at their household garage. The south side of which had at least 4’ drop off (maybe it was like 4”) within 10’ of the basket. Many of the players of these games were repeat participants like Crumley, Killam, Gilroy, Drake, Fouch, DeMoss, Smith, Bardole, Young and many more that I don’t recall at this time. After the “new” gym was built in ’57, it didn’t take long for someone (Roger?) to figure out entrance without a key. The games were shifted to that better location and many times we would be “discovered” by faculty or custodial only to be told to “lock up” when we left.
This was my reason for going to school, to play games. If it involved a ball, I was interested. Classwork, not so much. A funny thing happened along the way though. Because of the patience and persistence of all the teachers, education and a desire to learn rubbed off on me. It was because of teachers like Johnson, Wilson, Crumley, Osborn, Peters, Daugherty, Roberts, Killam, Fry and others, I became especially interested in math and science. A lot of that initially was an interest to be eligible academically for sports, but as time went on, it turned into a real desire to learn.
While in high school, because of Roger Crumley, Carl Killam, Ron Ridnour and others, I started thinking of the possibility of college. No one in our family had ever gone beyond high school. I had no frame of reference for that one. These guys talked like it was a foregone conclusion. I began thinking that way too.
There were about 70 students in the high school, grades 9 – 12 while I was there. A large majority would go on to become Doctors, Nurses, Lawyers, Accountants, Educators, Business people and others with advanced degrees. I believe this was considerably a higher percentage of college attendees than other schools of that era. This was the environment in the Rippey school system. It rubbed off even to those of us who didn’t care about education. When you thought all you wanted to do was play ball, be in the band, sing in the choir, and hang out with your friends, without an initial interest in doing so, you became interested in knowledge.
When in college I was pleased to find out I could compete not only on the court, but especially in the classroom. Thank you, Rippey Consolidated School, for making it possible for a start-up, mediocre student like me to become one truly interested in knowledge.
Education, Education, Education