No. 53--Lincoln High, 21st and J

   During its 75 years, Lincoln has worked up to an excellent school system, with three high school buildings, three exclusively for junior and 20 exclusively for elementary grades. It includes attractive and ample buildings and high standards of education. There is little now to indicate ordeals of past schoolboard heroes who kept an adequate school roof over juvenile heads as Lincoln in its hasty growth trampled down surrounding cornfields.

   Lincoln's first public school was held in Elder Young's stone seminary where The Journal now stands--Mrs. H. W. Merrill at the blackboard with a babe on one hip. The seminary burned in 1867 and another stone schoolhouse started at 11th and Q, partly the product of town-held festivals and dinners. But the board announced when school began that funds were exhausted and it would have to levy a "rate bill of 50 cents per month, per scholar, payable monthly."

   Seventy years ago Lincoln Schools showed not a trace of today's pattern. However, that year school authorities looked over their motley throng and for the first time waved it into groups. Out went these orders in the fall of 1872: "At the first ringing of the university bell all scholars of the primary grade and those who will read in the first and second readers and begin the study of mental arithmetic will meet at the stone schoolhouse at the corner of 11th and Q. Those who will read in the third reader.. will meet at the building on 12th street known as the White schoolhouse. All prepared to enter schools of a higher grade will meet at the building on O between 11th and 12th." The stone schoolhouse at 11th and J continued more or less as a free and easy country institution, without all that citified grading.

   But even in 1872 the high school which was to serve students at 15th and N for 42 years had been started, and next year it was occupied. From that date Lincoln schools looked up and on. The present building was placed on its 15 acre grounds, J to Randolpth (sic) and 21st to 23rd, in 1915.

 

No. 54--Veterans Hospital, 600 So. 74th

   This rim-of-the-prairie picture is of Veterans hospital. Here men lie and think of war. Planes thunder over their upturned faces and they remember the airpalnes (sic) of 1918, tho a few may be occuiped (sic) with planeless thoughts of Sam Juan Hill, and a very few with moldly memories of the blue and the gray. Here, perhops (sic), war news is taken--largely by radio--in larger and more frequent doses than anywhere else in Lincoln. All the patients--capacity is 251--have been thru war somewhere. Before long the doors will swing open for a fourth generation.

   Veterans Hospital is probably the first place in Lincoln to practice the art of blackouting--a wide precaution, for the hospital, with its 28 subsidiary buildings, off by itself on a hill, sparkles at night likt (sic) a row of Christmas trees.

   A few veterans at the hospital are veteran patients--five or six years--but only a few. The turnover in most cases is more of the pancakes-on-a-hot-griddle sort. It is a general medical hospital which does nnot (sic) handle long, slow cases. There are 92 veterans hospitals sprinkled over the country. Except in a special cases, each takes veterans living nearest, so that those treated here are mostly from Nebraska or a narrow strip around it.

   The patients are not letf (sic) alone with their gloomy thoughts. Tuesday and Saturday nights they have movies. On Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays there is some other form of entertainment. The hospital library contains 4,000 books, and if the patient can't come to the library, the library comes to the patient. From now until Christmas occupants will be busy making next spring's American Legion poppies.

   If you, too, are puzzling over the 28 buildings, check them off as living quarters for attendants, power plant, warehouses, electric shop, plumbing shop, utilities buildings, garages, etc.

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© 2000, 2001 by Kathie Harrison, Ted & Carole Miller