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partment. Finding volunteers and money to carry on the dental program was not difficult for someone of Mrs. Quaintance’s resourcefulness and with the help of influential friends such as Ruby Jenkins and Frances Thornton.
Convincing the students and their parents was another matter. To draw attention to the importance of health, and to provide an incentive for children to get their teeth fixed, the school celebrated May Day, and each student who had participated in the dental program could also participate in May Day festivities.
“We were able to do what we did because we knew the community,” she said. “In those days we were all so familiar with everyone that there was no need for guidance counselors.”
And the volumes of paperwork necessary today were not needed then, she remembers. In fact, when Mrs. Quaintance became principal of the Elementary School in the 50’s, she taught part time, kept the books, and did her own typing. Another part-time teacher was also the librarian. “Luckily, the librarian, Lucia Kilby, was also a dietician,” Mrs. Quaintance said. “She made out the lunch menus.”
“We just did things however we could,” she said. “And when I got Mary Edna, (Mary Edna Schaefer, former elementary school secretary) I felt like we could do anything. Mary Edna could accomplish in an hour what someone else might take all day to do.”
Mrs. Quaintance said that she was blessed with excellent teachers as well as an excellent secretary. “I came to believe that good teachers are bom and that no amount of training can equal the instinct of a natural teacher,” she said.
Mrs. Quaintance remembers integration of the school as a test of her administrative powers and the good will of the community. “I made sure that each student in the lower grades had both black and white teachers,” she said. “I believe this took away the fears and the prejudices that the students might have. And we were determined to avoid the problems that we had seen in Warren County,” she said. “Unlike Warren, we were a close-knit community. It’s much easier to sympathize with people you’ve known all your life.”
Looking back, Mary Quaintance remembers a lifetime of hard work, but also a lot of fun. “When we were young, growing up here, we all had fun. My father (D. Lyle Miller of Gid Brown Hollow) taught us all to swim, play tennis and ride. We played outside, wore pants and rode like boys. I well remember racing horses with Anne Keyser. And as we became young ladies there were dances and parties every weekend. Often Jack Miller would organize the dances, getting a really good jazz band from Washington. We wore short dresses and high heels, bobbed our hair and danced the one-step, the two-step, the black bottom.”
Mary Quaintance laughed. “There was a dance called the Toddle, and a truly horrible one called the Camel Walk, where you stuck your neck out like a camel. I think that when we didn’t have bands we played records on those old victrolas.”
Before she met her husband, Raymond G. (Dike) Quaintance, Jr., Mary remembers going out with a young man who used to pick her up where she was first teaching, in Arlington, and take her to Front Royal for dances. “We’d dance until four, I’d get home about six, take a bath and go teach my classes,” she said. “Of course, I’d try to stand up all day so I wouldn’t get sleepy.”
“Nobody worried about us being out dancing all night,” she said. “At every dance the wall was lined with chaperones. And, of course, the streets were perfectly safe.”
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