Iva, born in 1919, was the daughter of Winifred Lawton and William Standish. She married John Calkins in September 1941.
When I was in the fourth grade my family moved from the Wilson School District to the Jenks District. We only lived about ¼ of a mile from the school which meant we could walk to school easily and go home for lunch. I finished my eighth grade in this school. We had to take state finals in the seventh and eighth grades. After finding I had passed I was excited about going to high school, but just before it was time my mother told me they couldn’t afford to send me. There was no money for books, clothes for me, and no way to get there so I couldn’t go to school that year. Dad said I could take the eighth grade over, but I chose to stay home.
The next summer I worked picking berries and cherries which gave me the few dollars I needed for school. A car load of kids was riding with Ken Stuart to Scottville so I had a ride for part of the year. Then we moved again, this time to the Ressiguie School District. I walked a mile each day to Aunt Maud’s house where I caught a ride with my cousins to school so I finished out the year.
The next year I went to Custer School because I could walk the mile and a half to it. I finished the tenth and started the eleventh grade there, and then we moved again. We were still in the same school district, but now I had to walk four and a half miles each way to school every day for the rest of my school years. That wasn’t too bad, and sometimes I got a ride at least part way.
After three years on that farm we moved again, this time back to the Jenks School District, but as I was in Normal School I stayed with George and Ev All in order to get a ride into Ludington to school. I helped George with the milking, did housework for Ev, and helped at home with the potato cultivating when I could.
When I think back over those years of farming, moving from place to place, changing schools so often, and always having so little of nothing to do with, I wonder how I accomplished my goal of becoming a school teacher, but I did.
Lucky her! I wanted to be a school teacher, particularly a kindergarten teacher. Mom said we didn't have enough money for me to go to college and when I mentioned I could get loans to pay back later, she said no. I remember her saying she wanted all her kids to graduate from high school, so I think what I was asking for was "a foreign thought" in her idea of what we could accomplish. To this day I am disappointed that I did not get to be a teacher. It is just one of the disappointments in my life, though, and others have had a much more profound effect on me. And I've lived through them all. And I would guess I will continue to have disappointments in my life. Why should I be any different than everybody else??
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