Obviously, I still haven't worked out the bugs on leaving comments on this blog. My sister tried to leave a comment on the entry about East Lakeview School posted on November 28, 2009. Her recollection is that it continued functioning longer than I reported there. She and my younger brother were in attendance there when I graduated from the school in 1954 the same time period my book The Ruin is set. Upon my graduation from the school I went on to Montezuma County High School. They remained at East Lakeview for the beginning of the following year. Here is her recollection of how that went. It wasn't until years later, 50, when the five of us siblings published an anthology of stories about growing up on the farm on Summit Ridge, that I realized that I wasn't the lone target at that school. My younger brother and sister were getting their fair share and when I left they got the full barrage. Here is my sister's comment.
"Ken, a comment regarding us younger kids transferring to West Lakeview. It was right after Christmas vacation my 2nd grade year when Brother and I were transferred by Dad because the fights at East Lakeview were getting to be too often and too threatening. East Lakeview continued to operate for several more years. I was 7th grade when East Lakeview closed and its students were transferred to West Lakeview. Our younger sister never attended East Lakeview. She started at West Lakeview and went there until we sold the farm and moved to town."
I started this blog with the twofold purpose of drawing attention to the approaching release of my book The Ruin and of the serious problem of bullying, particularly in the public schools. It was a serious problem in 1954 when I left grade school, and it is so serious now that students routinely commit suicide over it. I just typed in three words: "school bullying, suicide" and there were 55,700 hits on Google. Many of those hits were on current events. One of the top stories selected by Time Magazine for 2009 was on school bullying leading to suicide.
CNN ran a special series entitled "Can Schoolyard bullying lead to PTSD" 3/31/2009 The conclusion? Yes.
This past week the main letter in Dear Abby in our local newspaper the Bend Bulletin was from a high school sophomore who was immature for his age, being bullied along with a friend, and seeking advice. He said that a high school p.e. teacher was participating along with the other kids in the p.e. class. Abby's advice: enlist parents and go to the school authorities. Good advice, but are the school authorities listening, particularly if that p.e. teacher is also a favorite coach. Maybe I'm being unfair. Many of friends who were respected p.e. teachers and coaches by the way would have come down on bullies and bullying with the wrath of you know who.
I thank my sister for setting the record straight on East Lakeview. I'm working on that comment section. I'm pretty sure it really does work if you create a simple free Google sign in accnt. and leave a comment. It will notify me that the comment is there and all I have to do is post it. I do check every day to see if a comment is waiting to be posted.
Respectfully submitted,
Kenneth Fenter
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