Former students reunite with junior high teacher

Former seventh- and eighth-grade students of Pat Howell Uptain held a reunion dinner for their Hooey Elementary School teacher at a Cape Girardeau restaurant recently. The former students had attended the school located west of Morley and south of Oran during the 1940s.

In attendance were Anna Jo Waggoner of Cape Girardeau; Bob and Carol McMackins Harris of Prescott, Ariz.; Wanda Jackson Schwitz of Scott City; Betty Jackson Lentz, Delois Graham Goetz, Shirley Emerson Stidham, all of Sikeston; Margie Harris Hicks and her husband of Advance, Mo.; Jerry and Euleta Carter of Lowell, Ark.; and Uptain.

Uptain taught in the Oran and Kelly school districts. After 40 years of teaching, she retired in 1982. She described the reunion as "one of the grandest days of my life. If you did not have the rural school experience you really missed something. It did have its advantages."