| Summary: | (5:31) Helen Robinson talks about her travels and how she used the travel to enhance her teaching. This interview is part of an oral hstory project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Helen Robinson
June 5, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Juliann Losey and Patti Hannah
Clip 4 of 5
Helen Robinson: I was teaching all the time. I was doing all that, cause even when I traveled that was my purpose for traveling. Cause I had gone to Florida to see a friend of mine and they were teachers. And we got to talking, and at that time we had what they called sand tables in our room. So, they were instrumental in gathering up all this stuff: kumquats and oranges and grapefruits and crabs and everything they could think of in that section. And I carried them back to my class and put them on my sand table. I found at that particular time, I had more interest in class, and discipline and everything than I had had before. I didn’t have to talk so much. They were interested in what they had. That’s when I decided I wanted them to know more, because they probably wouldn’t get to go to these places. So every summer, instead of going to summer school, I traveled. But I used the book that we had and found what we were going to teach for the next year and I’d go places where we were going to teach for the next year and then get slides and everything like that and bring them back and show them to the children.
Juliann Losey: Where did you go?
HR: Different places. Maybe sometimes we went to Colorado, somewhere like that. Alabama teachers would all have a tour and one year we went to England. We went to four countries there. And then, well, I just went everywhere I could think of. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go to the Holy Land. Bennie Walker was my fourth grade student. Bennie became a preacher. After Bennie became a preacher, he went to the Army. And Bennie got married and went to Cincinnati. I don’t know why he left Cincinnati, but anyway, he went to Buffalo, New York and he went to the Holy Land. His mother, you saw her in the papers the other day, she and I was friends. We’d been friends ever since he was a baby. So, my husband wouldn’t let me go the first time. He didn’t like planes, you know and so, I didn’t get to go on his first trip to the Holy Land. My husband died in ’ 84 and a year after my husband died, he was going back. She called, she said, “ Helen, Ben,” we called him Ben,“ Ben is going back to the Holy Land. Do you want to go?” I said, “ I ain’t got no money right now.” After I talked with him, see at that time, they were, we were getting our checks, and we would save it. They, they give them to us all straight through the year, and you had a chance to save a little, so there was a man at the bank. The bank was on Court Street, and he was nice enough to let me, let us have money to buy a little, knick- knacks and stuff like that, and then pay it when we come back. And that’s the way I got to Holy Land. It was wonderful. It was something that I had always wanted to do. We were baptized in the Jordan. And when we came out of the Jordan, and they had service and it was wonderful. We had a good time. And there’s something, [ inaudible] kept me moving. And I don’t believe I would have survived without it. After my husband died it was terribly lonesome. And I, I just don’t think I could have made it.
|
|---|
