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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 38 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: October 2000 Volume 38 Number 4, Pages 131–144 Neiman on Neiman: An Autobiography BG: This is an interview with Bertha Neiman in her home at 603 Berwyn Avenue in Berwyn. The interviewer is Bob Goshorn. It is April 14, 1978. Bertha, you've lived in this area for quite awhile. Are you a native of Berwyn? BN: No, we moved out from Philadelphia when I was a sophomore in high school. That was in 1926. BG: And your father Winfield and the whole family came out here at that time? BN: Yes, that's right. Dad was an engineman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Of course he had to go into Philadelphia to work, so we located near the railroad. We lived in West Philadelphia at the time and Overbrook High School was being built. I was supposed to go to Overbrook, transferring from West Philadelphia High. In the meantime, we were moving out to Berwyn in October. So, I came out with my parents to enroll in high school here. School had started already. Consequently, I commuted by train for a month or so until we moved. That's when I noticed that Berwyn was a higher elevation than Philadelphia. You could tell the difference at Villanova. It would be clear in Philadelphia, and it would start raining in Villanova. I never knew whether to bring an umbrella or not. BG: Did you find our schools more difficult or different from the schools in the city that you were going to? BN: Well, West Philadelphia was on double sessions. That's why they were building Overbrook, to relieve the overcrowding. We went to an annex down near the University of Pennsylvania, and had to take two trolleys to get there. It was an elementary school building originally. So when we came out here the high school was just the 1908 building, but I got lost in it! I was terrible . . it was very embarrassing. And because they had a study hall every once in a while, the study hall kept changing! Of course the others in my class had been here in school two weeks. They knew where they were going, and I didn't. They kept pulling me out of where I wasn't supposed to be! There were five children in our family, and the two youngest were boys, Winfield Jr. and Joseph. We were used to going to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia because we lived near there, but they were just enchanted with the woodlands around here. They would bring back all sorts of things from the woods. One time they brought back skunk cabbage --I just couldn't believe it. They had to take me down to show me where they got it, and then I believed them. I didn't think that anything that grew had an odor like that. Mother and Dad were anxious that we could adjust, but everything seemed to work out perfectly all right because where we lived in Philadelphia it took about three-quarters of an hour to get to the city. BG: You graduated from the old Tredyffrin Easttown High School? BN: Yes, I graduated in June of 1929. Mr. Teamer was the Principal. [S. Paul Teamer served as Principal from 1915 to 1940.] BG: I guess Wilmer Groff was the Supervising Principal [Superintendent of Schools] at the time? BN: Yes, he was. And of course he lived just a block away from us here. BG: After you graduated what did you do? BN: Well, the depression was started and jobs were hard to find. Everybody was going around to different places to find jobs. There wasn't too much in the way of industry out here. I took the Business Ed. course. During the summer they needed help at the district office here; in typing and filing things, like reports they had to get out ~ different things. I applied to do that. At the same time, Mr. Teamer had a young man who had graduated earlier from the school, as his, I guess, secretary, you call it. And he got a job in a bank. That was the first person, I understand, that Mr. Teamer ever had to help him. Evidently the school was growing, and the School Board decided to get two people. There was a boy from my class, and myself, who were both Business Ed., and we went in the office. The boy was William Goebel. He always wanted to be a newspaper man, and halfway through the year he got another job in some kind of public relations work in Philadelphia. So he left, and I inherited the entire position. Yes, I think Mr. Teamer was a little afraid of having a girl secretary. I think that's what it was, because if the first person you have is a boy you have to get used to the idea of change, and he just saw boy. At the time I was in school, and then afterwards, we had a very fine Vice Principal, they called it, Miss Mary Wingard, and she and Mr. Teamer worked beautifully together. She took care of the girls, making sure they were dressed and behaving well. And Mr. Teamer took care of the boys. She was a very good administrator. She could tell you what to do, and she got it done. She never had trouble with discipline. All she had to do was look at you and you knew that you, well, were doing something wrong. BG: Well, then, you started working there during the summer right after you graduated? BN: Yes, then they really signed me up. I was hired December 1, 1929. BG: And you stayed for...? BN: Forty-eight years. BG: Forty-eight years! BN: Yes, it was very pleasant to see the school grow, and I think I have people within two or three years of my age who still call me "Miss Neiman." Of course I was in the office, and so they still call me that even though ordinarily I'd prefer that they wouldn't. BG: You survived the depression without difficulty? BN: Well, things were very tight, and the school was, oh, just down to bare necessities, and we had very little. They had to cancel Home Economics and anything like that that needed extra expenditures. I don't believe we had Shop either. I just don't remember that -- it was quite awhile ago -- but I remember things were very difficult and .... BG: Were there pay increases during that time? BN: Umm, not that I remember, because I don't think we were getting too much as it was. I think it just leveled off. Yes, but I do remember some changes - this might be interesting. When we first came here, they had real theater in Berwyn, across the tracks, like Hedgerow Theatre. They had regular plays. Tredyffrin Easttown High School used the theater, because the school auditorium was on the second floor until the new addition was constructed in 1928. Miss Wingard was an English teacher and also coached the plays. And they put on "Seventeenth of (?)." They put on plays, built their own scenery, and everything they would need to put them on, at the Berwyn Theater. BG: Oh, they used that as their auditorium while it was over there? BN: Yes, that's right. Evidently there was a certain time of year when the theater wasn't being used. It still has a massive place in the back that's like a regular theater, where they take the sets up and lower them. Mr. Teamer took pictures of the play casts. Now that I think of it, he saved an awful lot of money for us at the school. He had a camera that you put on a tripod, and he took pictures of the football team, all the sports teams, the play casts. Those were the pictures they used in the yearbook. Miss Wingard always had a picture taken of the different sets they used on the play. I imagine she used them for reference. BG: Do you have any idea what happened to them? BN: Oh, yes, there were some over at the school. The pictures of sports teams, especially football, were in the 1908 building. They had two stairwells going up each side, and they had them along every step. They were up on the wall and had the captain, of course, in the middle. And the ball -- the football, the basketball -- would have the date on the ball. BG: Well, Paul Teamer was also the football coach, wasn't he? BN: When I first started, he was football coach and he also coached golf. He used to coach different sports until they got enough men to take over. BG: How many were on the faculty when you first went to school? Do you remember? Ten? Fifteen? BN: No more than that. And when they built the addition on to the school, they called it the 1928 addition. It was a combination auditorium/ gym, and I think it was ready right during basketball season. They played some county playoff games in there at the end of the season because it was an entirely new gym. And then we graduated from there in 1929. That was the first class that graduated out of the new auditorium. BG: The other wing was added in 1939 if I recall correctly. BN: Yes, that's when they put the Junior High on. They called it the Junior High wing. BG: Up to then the school had been for ninth to twelfth grade? BN: Yes, and Malvern Borough kept their students until they were ready to go into tenth grade. Mr. Heintzelman was the Principal up there. And in East Whiteland the Principal was, well, later she was Mrs. Markley, now I forget what her name was before that. Also, Willistown School kept very close touch with the High School to make sure that their students were prepared. And Tredyffrin Easttown always made sure their students were properly prepared, and would enter the High School on an equal footing with the other students. Miss Wingard and, of course, Mr. Teamer, felt that we should have a very well rounded education. I remember Miss Wingard would take us (you paid your own way) by train to the theater to see "Hamlet" -- "Macbeth" -- different things like that. Of course, you were studying that in English class. Before you went you were all prepared. You knew what the story was about. It was really a learning experience, and I think the students remembered it very well. Mr. Teamer's field was History, and he organized field trips that took you to Valley Forge to visit the different encampments, different lines. You had the entire picture before you went. Then, also, they took a motor caravan to Gettysburg Battlefield and to Brandywine. The parents would often drive the cars, and you would have a full car. It was very organized. Once, after I started working in the office, they were very short of cars and Mr. Teamer asked if I would drive to Gettysburg. You all had your place in line. There was a motorcycle policeman in front and there was one bringing up the rear. Each town we came to, the police would meet us there and take us through. You just went straight through, red lights or no red lights. It was really wonderful! You were supposed to have your car in perfect condition. They did not drive fast, but if anyone had any trouble, the whole line stopped. I mean, you didn't leave anybody! There was some difficulty in one of the cars when I was on the trip, and we pulled over to the side. Mr. Teamer got a ride on the back of a policeman's motorcycle to go down to see what the problem was. Coming back there was an inn at York where you stopped for dinner. And then, of course, the Brandywine Battlefield was the second trip .... BG: They were taking a class out of the classroom a lot earlier than I imagine a lot of other schools did? BN: Probably, probably. And I remember Mr. Teamer was in the First World War, and when he came back, they say the football boys used to complain because, for warm-up, he would walk them over to Valley Forge and back before they even started the practice. They thought that was pretty good. But Mr. Teamer had these other teachers, as I saw it later, like George Kirkpatrick and Mr. Charles Wise -- any of his teachers who were interested in administration ~ he would let work with him on the budget, scheduling and things like that. And then, when an opening came, quite a few of our teachers went off and became principals on their own. Mr. Teamer had great rapport with his students also. I remember the boys used to say that if they did play hooky, he knew where to find them. The Tredyffrin Golf Course was at Paoli. We used to have a pretty good golf team then because the boys could caddy there, and they would be pretty good golfers. I know long afterwards, one of the men told me, "If we looked around the building and thought, 'well, nobody will miss us,' then we would take off. We walked up the railroad tracks to Daylesford, and when we stepped off the tracks, Mr. Teamer would be there with his car and he'd say, 'come on boys, let's go'." This young man said, "Well, he always knew where to find us if we weren't in school on a nice spring day." But then you asked about the war. In those days we went to Washington for three days. BG: Class trip? BN: Senior class trip. Miss Wingard always went, and she had one of the male teachers go with her as a chaperone. Washington was segregated then, and if there were any black students in the class, she would have Mazie Hall, who lived outside of Wayne, also go along as chaperone because those students had to stay in a separate hotel. When we were in Washington we used to go places by taxi. The black students would come with us and we all went together. And they even -couldn't eat in the hotel dining room. They usually ate with the maitre d'hotel or something like that. BG: Then, at the school, were there any problems between the black students and the others? BN: No, there was no difference. We all had the same opportunities and there was no distinction -- in sports or anything. In classes, everywhere, we were all students together. Miss Wingard and Mr. Teamer felt that this three-day trip was an educational experience. We went by train, and ate in the diner on the train. A lot of students had never done that. A lot of us had never been away from home overnight, so that was different. And then, to order a meal from a menu was different. I mean that really was -- it was an educational experience. We went to the theater down there and the different museums. The National Cathedral was being built. There was a garden there. It was beautiful. It had a grotto in it. The name escapes me. We saw the government buildings, and sometimes the House of Representatives or the Senate would be in session. Then we would be in the Gallery to view the legislative deliberations. During the war there was no other way to go on trips like that. Then, after the war, there were motels, people had cars - then they didn't have that trip anymore. Miss Wingard said it wasn't necessary because families were giving their own children that experience. So it was interesting how our educators in those days kept up with the trends, and made sure that you were prepared for things. BG: How many different principals did you work for? BN: Mr. Teamer, and then there was Mr. Brey. Mr. Wallace S. Brey [Principal from 1940 to 1952] followed Mr. Teamer. Then, Mr. Brey retired. He developed cataracts very quickly right after Christmas one year. He said to me that he thought he had a little trouble with his eyes, and he had gone to the doctor and the doctor said he had developed cataracts. He didn't tell students or teachers or anyone about it. I didn't realize how bad his sight was until he came into the office one day. His office was on one side of the hall and our office was on the other (by that time I had an assistant). It happened that Connie Piombino was my assistant. She was sitting at her desk, but the sun was shining on her hair and made it look lighter. Mr. Brey came to the door and said, "Where's Connie?" I said, "She's here, Mr. Brey." He didn't recognize her from a distance. He spoke to people in the hall. He evidently recognized them by their walk, their voice or something like that. But, when he needed to read things, he had to hold them up real close and real high. He was on the job, but there were no interviews, and he resigned in June of 1952. He said, "As long as I won't be able to have a cataract operation until winter or spring, I don't want to stay here in this climate for winter and have to stay in the house." He said he was going to Florida. So, then, Dr. B. Anton Hess [1952 - 1957] had been appointed Principal coming in and Mr. Brey was leaving. About a month before school was going to open in September, Mr. Brey said something that really shocked me at the time. He said, "Dr. Hess won't be able to come until right before school starts, but I told him that you'd have everything ready for the beginning of school." And, of course, when I thought about it, it was a great honor but I thought, "Oh, will I?" What a responsibility! BG: It will never show on the record that Bertha Neiman was acting principal for one month then? BN: No. Of course they had an Assistant Principal. But, anyway, he was depending on me to make sure everything was ready in the way of text books, supplies and things like that. And, so, Dr. Hess came, and that's when they were going to build Conestoga High School. It was a busy time in the office with general routine, planning the new school and running the old. In the meantime, the Junior High had been organized as a separate school. Mr. Teamer had really organized that. He felt that the ninth grade should have a little responsibility, and so when they organized the Junior High; even though we used the same gym, the same Home Ec. room, Art department, things like that, he wanted it to be entirely separate. They had their own school paper, their own promotions and things like that, because he said the seventh, eighth and ninth grades would be a little more mature. Then, they'd come to Senior High and they would be down again -- tenth, eleventh. They'd work their way up again. BG: Well, school was pretty crowded at that point? BN: Oh, very crowded! And, we were constructing this beautiful new building -- Conestoga High School. Dr. Hess would say, "Well, what kind of furniture do you think we should have in the office? Do you want the regular office furniture or do you want contemporary?" And I'd say, "Well, now, Dr. Hess, do you want to match the new building?" We said we wanted contemporary to go with the nice new building. I didn't get out very much to see it during construction even though it was only a block away. People would come back and say, "Oh!" But, we were up to see the ground breaking and for the cornerstone laying [on October 27, 1954]. It was a wonderful time. The office had to move in before it was completely finished. We were in a classroom, and we had to bring all the paper and supplies with us. It was interesting. I don't think they had finished the auditorium. They still had the seats to put in and things like that. They were still working on it, and there were things throughout the building like that. About two years after we were there, or maybe it was earlier than that, there was a Conestoga Valley High School being built on Horseshoe Road, I think, outside Lancaster. I'll never forget that day. This great big shipment of steel came, by truck, and the fellow said, "Well, it's for Conestoga High School." And we said, "Well, we're built. We don't need steel." When we looked again, it was for Conestoga Valley. And so, over the years, it's surprising how many things happened like that. They would send us things that came to them that belonged to us. And we would send things to them. We always kept their address at hand so we had it. BG: The old High School, then, became only the Junior High school, is that right? BN: Yes, that's right, it was entirely separate, but even when we were both in the same building they had a separate office. The last secretary there before we moved over was Philomena Vallese, and we often worked together. If she needed help, I'd give it to her and if I needed help, she'd help me out, back in the days when we were the only ones in the offices. At commencement, she'd help me get ready for that, and I'd help her get ready for promotions. We always had a good relationship. Then, of course, over the years, our assistants were students from the school. They were Business Education students who were ready to graduate. If there was an opening in the school office, usually our girls stayed one or two years before they got another position. They would eventually go to Burroughs or those different industries that were coming into the area that were, of course, paying better and giving opportunities for advancement. I was always glad to see them advance themselves. Then the Principal would ask for applicants from the graduating class who were interested. The selections would be made, and we'd have our office replacements. The girls were very good. The Business Ed. department used to assign students during the school year. The "clericals" and the "secretarials" would come in, alphabetically, for a few days at a time. BG: On-the-job training type program? BN: Yes. We would mark them as to appearance, and they had to dress appropriately for the job. We would give them instructions in mimeographing, adding machine and things they had in class but weren't responsible for individually. The teacher, Mrs. Mary Dunlap, was head of the department, and I had her in school myself. She would say that the students took orders from them in Business Ed. and knew what they were required to do. But, to go out into the business world, it would be good for them to have the experience of getting orders from someone else. Someone said to me, "Well, didn't it take you time to train them?" Yes, they were trained in a certain way. But, no, it was nice for us because we felt we were helping them and giving them a start. They were helping us. They would come in their junior year for one day, and it was surprising how they would remember the next year when they came in -- like where we always kept things in the same place, like the schedules were here, this was there. It was surprising how they'd be able to pick it up. BG: Did you feel there was much difference between the kind of academic training they were getting as compared to what you had received? BN: No, being there in the office and in the school every day, changes seemed gradual, and I don't think you realized them as much as someone else who had graduated some years before and came back, say, when their children came to school. Any changes that were made, I think, were because of changes in the times and trying to react to them. I remember in the earlier days, Mr. Teamer used to say that the community was a cross section of the national population. But, of course, when the Schuylkill Expressway and the Pennsylvania Turnpike came through, it did change the character around here. We used to teach Industrial Arts, and at one time we had Agriculture. It changed. BG: After Dr. Hess, who was your next Principal? BN: Mr. Karl A. Zettelmoyer was the Principal then [1957 - 1971 ] and, of course, we had ... Dr. John Rittenmeyer following his death. BG: He died? BN: Yes, Mr. Zettelmoyer died suddenly one weekend. He loved to play the organ in the auditorium. Conestoga had the memorial organ, and Mr. Zettelmoyer could play by ear. Every once in a while, after school maybe, all at once, you would hear him playing hymns, mostly by ear. You would hear the organ, and then he would come back and say, "I couldn't resist it. I couldn't resist it." BG: In addition to your work at school, you were quite active in the Professional Women's Association, weren't you? BN: Well, yes, we had the Berwyn/Paoli/Malvern Business and Professional Women's Association. Before that, we were part of the Chester County Women. We decided there were enough women in the area and the club formed. I think we are about twenty-six years old. BG: Were you one of the one's who got this group together? BN: Charter member of the group, yes. It makes you feel old, you know. I do want to say this about Miss Wingard. She was a very unusual woman, a wonderful woman. She had red hair, sort of carrot, I call it. After she retired, the club helped set up an award, the "Mary E. Wingard Award in English" in her honor, for the outstanding English student of the graduating class. It was just a little loving cup, not money or a scholarship. We were honored that Miss Wingard was able to be present at the first awarding of the prize. People were saying, "Well, now, Miss Wingard, you look just the same as when I first remember you." She would reply, "Well, I must have looked awfully old as a young girl! That's all I can say." BG: You know, she was a football coach one year? BN: Yes, but of course, she didn't take any honor for that. She just said that she supervised, and the boys did all the work. BG: Well, this house is convenient not only to the station, but also to the school. Did you walk over when you worked there? BG: Yes, often I would meet Phil Vallese and we would walk together. It was really very interesting. Saturday morning would be the time I would meet her most often because Junior High started at a little different time. We'd be walking over on Saturday and you would pass - well, I remember particularly Mr. and Mrs. Appicciafuoco's house on Old Lancaster Road -and you could smell the coffee, bacon and eggs. And when we saw Mrs. Appicciafuoco afterwards, we used to say, "We're going to stop in some morning and have breakfast with you." And, she'd say, "Well, come ahead, come ahead." Afterwards, when I would walk over by myself, it was surprising how often I met people, like Dr. John Alden Mason, going for the train on Cassatt Avenue carrying flowers from his garden, and we'd say, "Good morning." BG: You worked on Saturday at the school? BN: We worked on Saturday for a good many years. I had an interesting experience on a Saturday when Mr. Brey was Principal. It was a cold, damp morning. They had no heat in the building to keep the office warm. I had the office door closed, and Mr. Brey, this Saturday, had an appointment. Parents were coming in to see him about college or something, so he said he would be up a little before the appointment, but he wouldn't be up any earlier because I had work to do. I opened the office door for some reason, and there was smoke in the hall. I thought, "Well, that's strange." I went to look for the custodian because he was working somewhere in the building. When I found him, he was up on the second floor scrubbing the cafeteria. I told him we had an awful lot of smoke downstairs. Mr. Griffith was the custodian, and he said, "You know, just before you came here I thought I put my pipe in my pocket and it wasn't out, because I thought I smelled cloth burning." So, he said, "I checked my pipe and it was all right and so were my trousers!" He and his son, who happened to be working with him that day, got out of the cafeteria as soon as they realized they could smell smoke -and see it too. It was just smoke, but they both grabbed a fire extinguisher and went down the stairs. It happened to be in a closet that was down almost under the office. The office had a concrete floor because the boiler room was underneath, and by that time the smoke was seeping through. There was a window in the stairwell, so I could hear them. I was at the top of the stairs and they went down. All at once they said "There it is!" When they opened the door to the closet where they stored, I think, athletic equipment, it burst into flame. They yelled, "Call the fire company!" I went back to the office and called the fire company. I also called Mr. Brey, and his wife said, "He's on his way up." He arrived the same time the firemen did, and he was very much surprised. The fire company laid the hose right through the front hall and, in all the excitement, I forgot completely about the appointment! The parents, the man and his wife, appeared, and the man said, "Well, I think you're very busy this morning. I think I'll call you on Monday and make another appointment. You don't want to see us today." The outcome was favorable, but that was a very close call, and luckily, it was confined to the closet. It was some kind of combustion, and it was one of those sorts of unexplained things. As soon as the door opened it gave it air. It just quickly flamed. It's surprising how people react. Mr. Griffith and his son took it as a matter of course. Afterwards they said how many fire extinguishers they had to empty. They just kept working. They didn't say, "Well, okay, let's just wait until the firemen come." BG: Well, you were probably the first one in every day, weren't you? BN: Yes, I was. BG: To start calling substitute teachers? BN: Yes, I had the responsibility of calling until the last few years. But, then, I guess, I was so used to going in, anyway, that I always was the first in. We had to go regardless of whether it snowed or not - whether the school was open or not. I used to say, "If you couldn't get the car from the front of the house, you knew it was bad." Then you walked in. BG: Who was the last one to leave in the evening? BN: Well, it all depended on whoever had the most things to finish up. But, no, being first in, it always meant that I had to leave things ready for the morning. You couldn't say, "Well, I'll do this." That was the only thing with school work. You couldn't say, "Well, tomorrow I'm going to do a certain thing." Because tomorrow something else would come up and you wouldn't get to it. It was an exciting time - never a dull moment. I enjoyed working with the children and, of course, the faculty, and the principals and the administration - everybody was always very, very good to me. *Taken from an interview with Bertha Neiman, who worked at the high school in Berwyn from 1929 through 1977, serving many years as administrative assistant to the school principals. The interviewer was Bob Goshorn, a past president of the History Club and long time editor of its Quarterly publication, also a Tredyffrin Easttown School Director for 27 years. The interview was taped in 1978 and transcribed to written text by Anne Murdock in 1999. Both Miss Neiman (in 1984) and Mr. Goshorn (in 1995) have since passed away. The initials BG and BN refer to the interviewer and the interviewee. |
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