Meadowbrook Elementary, Belle Pearson and The Surrounding Area.

In 1949, I started the first grade at Meadow-
brook Element-
ary. At least on the outside it looked then as it does now, even extending to the same temporary classroom buildings sitting behind the main brick school. The principal was Charles Berry and my First Grade teacher was a woman named Belle Pearson. This would be the last year she would teach before retiring. From my point of view, she was a kind, sweet, caring lady, an excellent teacher and I got along quite well with her. Strangely, she had a reputation that had a lot of parents and children virtually in hysterics. Why? The only reason I can think of is that she was exactly what a good teacher should be. Someone who didn't let the pupils run rough shod over her. In other words, she taught…and we learned as a
result.

By the way, if you will look to the left, you will find photos of my first grade report card. Take a good look at it and compare it to the report cards of today...assuming they’re even sending report cards home anymore. If some ‘experts’ have their way, kids won’t be graded on their work at all for fear of damaging their self-esteem.

However, the perception that so many (meaning mainly the parents) had of her made registration an experience. The way the system worked was that you registered for school first, then you were assigned to the specific class. As you would expect, there were several different classes for each grade, meaning you had no idea who your teacher would be.

All too frequently, when a child was assigned to Belle Pearson’s room, the parent (usually the mother) would hug the child to her and start wailing something along the lines of “Oh, you got Belle Pearson...you got Belle Pearson! Oh, no! That’s horrible! I’m so sorry!”, etc., etc. It wasn’t long before the child was crying and screaming at the top of their lungs!

Incidentally, Meadowbrook Elementary uses the Buffalo as it's mascot (unless it's been changed as a result of political correctness). Matter of fact, I still have an original yellow and green Meadowbrook Buffalos hat from 1949 which I will eventually post a photo of.

As for what the area looked like in that time period, Meadowbrook Drive itself had been fully developed and the fire station on the northwest corner of Meadowbrook and Oakland was the main protection for this area. Today the station has been relocated further west on Meadowbrook, not too far from Meadowbrook and Beach, and the old fire station has become the Firehouse Gallery.

Oakland, Martel and the area around scenery hill from Meadowbrook up to what would eventually be I-30 was developing rapidly, driven in large part by the presence of Channel 5. Once you got north of the future location of I-30, Randol Mill Road (which was narrow and 2 lanes wide) snaked it's way thru heavy woods eastward towards Arlington. The entire area that is now White Lake Hills, Riverbend and Woodhaven was virgin ranchland (except for the White Lake Dairy, which is where White Lake Hills got it's name). The last vestige of the dairy can still be seen today on the west side of Oakland and north of I-30, just beyond the present day location of Waffle House. It’s a silo that looks like it was built from individual stones. In actual fact, it’s solid cast concrete that was textured to look that way.

The northeast corner of Meadowbrook and Oakland, where Meadowbrook Middle School is today, was a wide open field where cattle grazed. Yep, things were more than a little different in the late 40s and, in some ways, a lot better.