Roberta Sue Rasmussen was born in 1929 in Ohio, the daughter of Ellwood V. and Belle Hope (Robinson) Rasmussen. In 1930, baby Roberta was living with her parents in East Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Her father was working as a YMCA branch secretary. The Rasmussen family (Ellwood, Belle, Roberta and younger sister Olive, and Belle’s mother Marie Robinson) were still living in East Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio when the census was taken in 1940. Ellwood was still employed by the YMCA working in social services. The 1950 census located Roberta lodging with several other single women in Evanston, Cook County, Illinois, where, as her obituary mentions, she was a student at Northwestern University. Roberta was married in 1951 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to David Mehard Ellis, also a Cleveland, Ohio native. Their wedding was announced in the Centralia Fireside Guard of Centralia, Missouri:
“Rasmussen-Ellis Vows in Cleveland Heights, O. The marriage of Miss Roberta Sue Rasmusen and David M. Ellis will take place Saturday, August 25 at the Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Sue Rasmussen is the daughter of the former Belle Hope Robinson of Centralia, great niece of Mrs. R. L. Hope of St. Petersburg, Fla., and granddaughter of the late Mrs. Marie Robinson. The wedding will be followed by a reception for 200 at the home of the bride. Her only sister [Olive] Joan will be maid of honor and Martha Ellis, sister of the groom, and three other Northwestern University classmates will comprise the other attendants. Mr. Ellis is a graduate of University School, Case Institute of Technology, served overseas in the European Theater in World War II, and is now a Junior Project Engineer with Fisher Body division of the General Motors Corp. at their Detroit, Michigan office. After a honeymoon trip to Seigniory Club, Montebello, Quebec, the couple will reside in Detroit.”
Sue and David’s daughters Elizabeth, Margaret and Catherine were likely adults by the time I met Mrs. Ellis, when I began the fifth grade in the fall of 1983. She was aged fifty-three then – the age I will reach on my next birthday. Mrs. Ellis’ hands shook, and her voice shook a bit when she spoke. I remember her addressing it on the first day of school, and no one ever mentioned it after that. She was very thin, but she never seemed to have any difficulty standing, walking or teaching, and somehow without ever addressing discipline, she commanded respect in her classroom. The only things she wrote on my report card (in clear, unshaken handwriting) were my grades for each quarter, and at the end of the year, “Hope Wendy enjoys middle school.” I was seated near the back of the classroom, with my friend Tracy on one side, and a boy whose name I cannot remember on the other. That boy was a constant thorn in my side. He would constantly try to cheat by leaning over to look at my paper, betting that due my shyness and general unwillingness to interrupt that I would not report him. I can’t remember whether I ever did, but I’m sure Mrs. Ellis knew; she didn’t miss much.
I remember reading a story in a reading book in fifth grade about the number “googol” – 1 followed by one hundred zeros. It may have been the same story that challenged us as readers to figure out how old we would be in the year 2000. I recall thinking that I would live until the year 2000 as completely ridiculous – even after I calculated that I would be 27 years old that year. As generation X (though we weren’t called that yet) was raised practicing monthly fire drills, tornado drills and civil defense drills, the thought that we would survive to be adults was just – silly. In all weathers, the whole school would troop outside in straight lines for surprise fire drills. At any time of day, the whole school would exit classrooms for surprise tornado drills to shelter in any area without windows – bathrooms, interior hallways, the furnace room in the basement. At any time of day, for a civil defense drill the whole school’s worth of kids would crawl under desks with hardcover textbooks held open over our heads and necks, while the teachers closed doors and covered windows – as if those measures would protect anyone from a nuclear attack. We didn’t know how lucky we were not to also have to practice active shooter drills. Each type of drill had a different bell signal. To practice as many drills as were required by state law in those days, we were having at least three a month. Almost every week, hundreds of children would jump out of their skins at the sound of the signal, hearts racing and ears ringing, while teachers would shout out directions we couldn’t hear. None of the drills were announced (at least not to the students), and we never knew when they began whether it was the real thing or a drill.
I can remember clearly having art class with Mrs. Warren and music class with Mrs. Swigart in Mrs. Ellis’ room that year. I don’t remember much of Mrs. Ellis teaching, though I’m sure she did. I went to Mrs. Remsberg’s room for reading group – finally there were other children in my school reading at my level, notably Chris and Christy, who both became lifelong friends. I also remember playing a lot of 7-Up and Hangman in Mrs. Ellis’ room. We had a lot of indoor recess that year – it must have been an unusually cold winter, because under normal circumstances the teachers’ contract required us all to go outside so we wouldn’t require supervision by more than one of them at a time. Mrs. Ellis had a lot of board games and other indoor activities to keep us occupied, and she would let us play music on her tape player. Somebody had Michael Jackson’s Thriller album on tape, and we heard it repeatedly that year.
After I left Stiles Elementary School for the middle school, my mom was still in touch with Mrs. Ellis – she was the administrative assistant for the Gifted & Talented committee with which Mrs. Ellis served. So, when Mrs. Ellis had an estate sale before moving to California, Mom and I went. I don’t remember what year that was or whether we bought anything. Roberta Sue (Rasmussen) Ellis died of cancer in 1989, at the age of fifty-nine years, only six years after she was my fifth-grade teacher. I was still in high school at the time.
Comments
Post a Comment