Ball High School - Purple Quill Yearbook (Galveston, TX)

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Galveston is her home town, so naturally she graduated from our good old Alma Materfl after which event she journeyed on to Texas University, graduated, and attended Columbia University. She is the possessor of a B.A. degree and is working on her M.A. Besides Ball High, Miss Bettencourt has taught at Wichita Falls, Texas, and Huntington College at Montgomery, Alabama, where she was head of the Commercial Department. This man has an unusual hobby-the study of tropical fish. The gentleman in question is Mr. H. Steele Campbell, Ball High biology teacher. Mr. Campbell says that these fish have always interested him, and what could be more natural than to adopt them as his hobby? Mr. Campbell is a native of Palestine, Texas, and graduated from Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College, where he received his B.S. and M.A. degrees. Since he has taught in Anderson and Shelby counties as well as in Galveston, he is not new at teaching. His opinion of an ideal student is one who is courteous enough to listen and intelligent enough to apply some of the things he learns to his own situation. Nine countries and forty states of the United States is the travel record of Mrs. Shelby Mowat, Ball High biology teacher. She has visited-besides the forty states--Mexico, Canada, the British Isles, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and Cuba. Mrs. Mowat's hobbies are sewing and gardening. She likes danc- ing, bicycling, and going on picnics in her spare time. She enjoys reading The Reader's Digest and Coronet.'i Her favorite food is chocolate, she likes blue best of the colors, and her favorite flower is the rose. Herbert Marshall and Bette Davis get her nod in the actor and actress favoritesf' Q She dislikes t'crabby peopleg her ideal student is one with a good, all-round personality-not a bookworm, but one who has other inter- ests besides books in school. This student would have an unselfish personality and be willing to help others. As for background, Mrs. Mowat is a native of Galveston and a graduate of Ball High School. She received her B.A. degree from the University of Texas. Before coming to teach at Ball High, she taught at Stephen F. Austin and Crockett schools. iii Biology is the subject and Miss Agnes Spence is the teacher. She hails from Austin, Texas, and is a graduate of the University of Texas. Miss Spence majored in Zoology and chemistry at Incarnate Word College in San Antonio for two years. 57

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eaifwzing. 7eacfzm4 Again, the Quill staff is presenting sketches of some of the teach- ers of Ball High, with the purpose of bringing about more friendly relationships between students and teachers. This time, we have in- terviewed the members of the Science Department and the Library staff. - Called Little Texas by the National Education Association be- cause she is only four feet nine inches tall, Miss Greta Oppe is known to Ball High as Little Miss Oppef, Miss Oppe considers it a rare privilege to have served as head of the Science Department for twenty-five years. The author of a work- text entitled Chemistry for High Schoolsf' Miss Oppe is vice presi- dent of the National Science Teachers Association of America. She is a director of the Texas Junior Academy of Science and is generally known for her scientific work. Anything scientific is both her career and her hobby, Miss Oppe says. Lil Besides being physics teacher here at Ball High, Mr. G. W. Bert- schler is sponsor of the Camera Club, which he originated in 1938. He is also interested in music, having been director of the Ball High Band from 1933 to 1937. He has played with the University of Texas Orchestra and the Galveston Melody Orchestra. In relation to physics, it is only natural that Mr. Bertschler is interested in mathematics and aeronautics. He has taught various math courses in summer schoolg he taught special classes in pre- flight aeronautics for the C.A.A. before the war, and for three years during the war he had a class of pre-flight aeronautics at Ball High. Mr. Bertschler is from New Braunfels, Texas, and is a graduate of the high school there. There were 16 members of the graduating class, he relates, of whom nine attended college and five became teachers. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Texas, with a major in mathematics for the first, and one in physics for the other. He served as a tutor for two years in the department of physics at the University of Texas. She would rather eat lemon pie than anythingg she liked Gone With the Wind so well that she read it twiceg she thinks Night and Day is a beautiful piece of musicg and she simply adores kittens. This is Miss Mildred Bettencourt. 56

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Any curiosity as to the large number of specimens in Miss Spence's biology lab may be answered by the fact that her favorite pastime is hunting for these articles. Some miscellaneous facts welve picked up about Miss Spence are that her hobby is raising flowers and her main dislike in students is dishonesty. Yes, our librarian does want you to use the library when neces- sary. Miss Mary Jane McGuire's ideal library pupil is one who can use the card catalogue and other refences without help, and who re- spects the rights of others while in the library. Miss McGuire was born in Milford, Texas, and she received her B.S. and B.A. degrees at Texas Presbyterian College for Women. She received her B.S. in Library Science at George Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee. She was assistant librarian at Texas Presby- terian College for several years before coming to Ball High School. She likes to collect antiques and enjoys reading poetry and biogra- phies. Her favorite food is devills food cake. Another traveler, Miss Alicia Tate, has been to Europe five times, to Canada and Mexico and through the United States. She enjoyed meeting the people and seeing the things she had heard about, and she has many stories to tell about them now. As Ball High's assistant librarian, Miss Tate is living right in her own home town. She, like many of our faculty members, is a grad- uate of the University of Texas. Miss Tate gives a sigh of delight when apple cobbler is served at dinner, and falthough there is no connectionj, she likes to collect old thingsf, Her favorite movie is Mrs, Miniver and she enjoyed the book '4Forever England. X Her ideal library student, Miss Tate revealed, is one who comes in the library quietly, gets his material quietly, and does his work quietlyf, X W1 . I Congratulations . The winner of the annual Colonial Dames Essay Contest for 1947 was Betty Schocke, who wrote under the pen name of Benita Standish. Her subject was f'Colonial Wars. In her essay, she gave a thorough description of the wars that took place during the colonial period. Her essay was forwarded to the State contest for further competition. 58